1.  Decide to write a book.
2. Wake up at 2 a.m. and realize that you may have made a mistake.
3. Change your mind. Collect every short piece you’ve written in the last six years and divide them into themes.
4. Collect them altogether into a Word document. It’s immense.
5. Wake up at 2 a.m. and realize that some of your short pieces are doo-doo.
6. Excise bad pieces, much like the guy who got his arm caught between boulders and sawed it off with a penknife.
7. Word document slightly less immense. Hmmm. Something’s missing…
8. So, what the heck? Add photographs. Make it immenser.
9. Wake up at 2 a.m. and realize that you have to add headers, footers, page numbers, a table of contents and squish it altogether into a 6″ x 9″ format with 1″ gutters.
10. Three weeks later, book is assembled.
11. Rewrite begins. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. You wonder, in re-writing if you were actually literate to begin with. I said THAT?
12. Three weeks later, you turn it over to a copy editor.
13. Two weeks later, when she gives it back, you realize you are only semi-literate. Maybe the book should be in Esperanto.
14. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Throw stories out. Throw words out. Throw, throw, throw.
15. Submit manuscript to automated online editor. Are you sure you’ve got the copyright? Throw photographs out.
16. Rejected. Margins.
17. Submit again
18. Rejected. Page numbers.
19. Repeat Step 15 fifty-six times.
20. Yay! MS accepted! You get a proof copy of your book!
21. You chose 12-point type, as recommended. It looks monstrous, like “On Cherry Street,” which was your first-grade reader in 1958.
22. Re-do the entire manuscript in 10-point type. Re-do headers, footers, page numbers, table of contents.
23. One week later, re-submit.
24. Yay! You get a proof copy of your book!
25. The header on page 156 is missing and so is the caption on page 203.
26. Re-submit.
27. Yay! You get a proof copy of your book!
28. Wake up at 2 a.m. This was a really stupid idea.
29. Re-read some of the content. Well, doggone it, that’s pretty good after all.
30. Throw more stories out Throw more words out. Eliminate any references to Donald John Trump. Add a song you wrote about Mike the Wonder Chicken.
31. Submit. It’s accepted!
32. Yay! Get proof copy #3. It looks good.
33. Caption on page 34 of proof copy is off center. At this point, you no longer care.
34. Read many articles about “How to Market Your Book.” Realize that  “marketing a book” is only slightly harder than learning how to run a nuclear submarine by yourself.
35. Wake up at 2 a.m. and realize that you may have made a mistake. Repeat this step for two weeks.

YOU MAY (OR MAY NOT) BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!