New Legacy Project Part 9: In Praise of Editors

Dear Friends and Fans,

Last month I announced that I finished all 36 thirty-six chapters of the rough draft of my book and placed them in the capable hands of my most capable editor, Dorion Sagan. Reading Dorion’s notes and suggestions, his corrections and improvements on my manuscript, I can only say that every serious and competent writer needs to should have not just a serious and competent editor but someone who understands and is on the same wave length as the writer. A person who even intuits what the writer intends to say, and helps the writer say it even better.

Craig Comstock in Lithia Park, Ashland, OR, 2014

Those of you who have known me personally for more than six years will remember my late husband Craig Comstock, himself a writer of several books and countless articles, and an editor as well as a and a book creation coach. For years he encouraged me to write a book about my artwork and the microscopic world, the “world of the tiny.” For years I observed Craig at his desk, reading and writing away on his computer, absorbed in the universe evoked by words, created by words. While I would stood stand in the check-out lines at grocery stores, Craig would be reading over at the newspaper or magazine stand. I used to tease him that when he died, his gravestone would someday read: “He loved to read.” It wasn’t until I began to write writing my own legacy book that I finally understood and appreciated Craig’s attraction to writing, his love of addiction to words, his need to write down his experiences rather than just talk about them casually. I only now truly understand how words take on delicious flavors when mixed together and simmered properly. I keep a photo of Craig near me when I am writing, to remember him, and to thank him, and to let him know I am carrying out his vision for me.

Google’s generative AI has just informed me that Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf “formed a unique collaboration between a pioneering author and her husband.” Ezra Pound's “work as a friend of T.S. Eliot is considered one of the most celebrated editing jobs ever done.” And Maxwell Perkins [whom I never heard of] edited works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, and was known as the "Editor of Genius". In this age of self-publishing, many people feel that they can handle the whole task themselves, but I disagree.

And now I am fortunate enough to be working with Dorion Sagan, a celebrated writer, ecological philosopher, and author or coauthor of twenty-five books, which have been translated into 15 fifteen languages (French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, German, Danish, Spanish, Hebrew, French, Portuguese, Turkish, Romanian, Catalan, and Basque). Dorion is an ecological theorist whose broadest speculations—Is the Earth an organism? Is the human body a “multispecies organism?—are grounded in science. He has brought the growing understanding of symbiosis as a major force in evolution into the intellectual mainstream, within both science and the humanities.

How lucky I am, to have an editor who is also a brilliant writer. I am now reading his 2007 book, Notes from the Holocene {A Brief History of the Future} and find many gems that express my own thoughts, only better. As the offspring of Carl Sagan and Lynn Margulis, Dorion’s ability to explain science is probably in his genes. His references to literature (including mythology and science fiction) and philosophy and magic make his writing rich, fascinating, entertaining and informative; and let us not forget that he has an ironic and droll sense of humor!

When I began this Legacy Project, I thought I would planned to self-publish the book. But now we are talking about sending the manuscript to an agent and to publishers. If we find a worthy publisher, I will earn some money. But in the meantime, I am my own and solo patron sponsor. It’s too soon for me to take pre-orders. HOWEVER, if you have enjoyed my artwork and blogs over the years and want to support me in this effort, you can 1) purchase reproductions of my artwork at shoshanah-dubiner.pixels.com, or 2) donate to my PayPal account using my email address: shoshanahdubiner@gmail.com. If and when the book comes out —through a publisher or self-published—you will be able to order a copy signed by me and inscribed to you. I hope to create a legacy worthy of you, my friends and fans, and of value to other contemporary and even future readers.