I’ve been writing about my book, and the enormous challenges it put in front of me, for so long the date is burned into my mental hard drive. The date is January 6, 2016. That’s the day I sat down at my desk at our Liberty Lake, Wash. home and began to write. I knew the book was going to be chronological, so I’d start with my earliest memories, but did I know exactly what words were going to find their way from my brain to my fingers and then onto the manuscript? No. I had no clue.

Having no clue was a perfect example of being “blissfully ignorant” about the process. Had I known how long it was going to take, and how high the mountain top was, I likely would’ve chickened out or come up with a legitimate excuse to not do it at all. The Kickstarter campaign was still in action, though, and a lot of people I love and respect were pledging enormous sums of money to help me make this happen, so there was that as motivation to dive in and create something. Anything. A book, maybe.

When I began, I had visions of writing it in total by June of that year. And then, maybe, the publishing part could be finished by mid-August and maybe (wouldn’t it be great?) we’d be able to debut the book at the U.S. Nationals over the Labor Day weekend. Yeah, what a great plan. I was only off by about six months in terms of the writing and another five in terms of editing, which wasn’t even part of my forward-looking plan when I started. Editing? I’ll find the typos and we’ll be done with it.

My editor, Greg Halling, had one edict for me when we began. He said, “Write it all. We can always trim, but it’s almost impossible to make it longer.” So, I wrote it all. The first draft, completed in late October, came in at roughly 1,000 pages. That was not going to work.

At Outskirts Press, they publish a lot of small works. Poetry books, short-story compilations, things like that. They are very accustomed to taking a “thin” book and making it look more substantial. Big margins, small dimensions, lots of illustrations, empty pages, things like that. They know how to take a 75-page manuscript and turn it into a 150-page book. Our challenge, with “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” was figuring out how to take what we had and make it manageable, in terms of size and thickness.

Greg and I toiled for a couple of months, to find “fluff” and take it out, or to streamline stuff that was overly wordy. We finally had it to where we thought it might come in at 700-750 pages. That still seemed enormous and daunting, like it would scare off readers by its own heft. So, with the Outskirts designers on board, we did the opposite of what they normally do. We took a 700-page book and found every possible way of making it shorter. We ended up at 545 pages, including the “legal stuff” at the front and the photos in the back.

And off it went. I’ve been telling my wife Barbara that the routine with the publisher has been for them to “aim long” so that any deadline they beat seems like a very good thing. When I finally approved the last proof of the book and sent it and the cover off to be born, the estimate was 2-4 weeks. I figured it might be sooner than that, so I told my publicist, Elon Werner, to be on alert and ready to go. We might have a book on sale within two weeks.

Then, over the weekend, my daily scan of Amazon.com surprised me. After typing in the title, instead of seeing “No Results Match Your Search” I saw my cover. It wasn’t on sale yet, but it was there. I told Elon to go to Code Red.

The next morning, on May 22, I woke up and picked up my phone. Barbara was getting up and starting to get ready for a day of work in her office. I was still laying in bed with Boofus and Buster. I clicked on my link to Amazon, on my iPhone, and typed in the title. And there it was. It was on sale.

Barbara came in the room and I calmly said, “It’s there. It’s on sale right now” as if I’d only muttered, “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day.” I didn’t scream or jump up and down. It was oddly calm. It was the top of the mountain I’d been climbing for more than 16 months, and instead of raising my arms and screaming, I felt myself sink into the mattress a little more and take a very deep breath. I put my hand on Buster and felt him purring. It was the most peaceful feeling I’ve experienced in a very long time.

I took another deep breath and got up. After brushing my teeth, shaving, and showering, I went to my desk and sent Elon a note to let him know we were “live” and on sale. His response was a completely appropriate, “Holy crap!” and off we went. Press releases went out, phone calls were made, and I spent the entire day on social media, letting the world (or at least my little slice of it) know that we had a book, and they could buy it, and there it was, and it’s real.

I barely broke for lunch and probably wouldn’t have had Barbara not quietly made me a sandwich and brought it down to me. Facebook, Twitter, emails, carrier pigeons, smoke signals. You name it, I used it. By that afternoon, some stats finally started showing up on the Amazon page. The most remarkable one was the sales ranking of the book. Within my category (“Sports and Outdoors – Biographies or Memoirs”) we hit the No. 50 ranking almost immediately. We made it as high as 42 before the initial “pent up demand” wave of purchases was over.

To be honest, the sight of so many sales actually made me nervous. Throughout the process of nearly a year and a half, this was my baby. It was my private challenge. Only Greg Halling and a few celebrity endorsers had seen more than rough drafts of the manuscript. Looking at the Amazon page, and realizing that actual human beings were parting with a good deal of money to buy it, struck me as scary. It was as if I never realized until right then that people were going to actually READ the book. It was a strange sensation.

My social media and email was rocking for the first 48 hours. Lots of alerts and notes from people who were telling me they’d ordered it. By yesterday, I was hearing from folks who had gotten the notification that it had shipped. My nephew Ewan was the first to post a Facebook photo of him holding the actual thing.

Since I retired from my PR job in November of 2015… Since I started the Kickstarter campaign on December 15 of 2015… Since I sat down to begin writing on January 6 of 2016… Since I finished the first draft of the enormous manuscript on October 20 of 2016…  Since I saw the first Galley Proof just a month or so ago… Since I approved the third Galley Proof and sent it off to Outskirts just a couple of weeks ago… Since all of that, throughout the entire process that started with me as a 59-year-old living in Liberty Lake, until yesterday as the 60-year-old me sat at his desk in Woodbury, Minn., it’s been nothing more than a project. It was a dream. It was a goal. It was the mountain top.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon when Ewan posted this photo, it was a book.

I’ve been writing a lot of words for the last 16 months. Big ones, small ones, fancy ones, utilitarian ones. Lots and lots of words. Hundreds of thousands of words.

I’m not sure I know the exact ones that reflect how it felt to see Ewan’s hand holding the thing I created. It wasn’t an outline anymore. It wasn’t a manuscript. It wasn’t a digital proof. It was a book.

And here’s the weird thing. A lot of people, in a number of states and countries, have their copies right now. Maybe some of them are reading it. Maybe it’s just on a shelf. Sue Madden, a good friend and the mother of my former CSK teammate and still great friend Matt Madden, came in second in the race to post a photo on Facebook. There it was again. It was a book. And a gorgeous pillow, as well.

The theme that runs as a continuous thread throughout the book is the concept of plowing forward. It’s how I’ve lived my life, and I seem to do it on a daily basis, whether it’s what I’m having for lunch or how I’m going to write whatever it is I’m creating. I’m doing it right now, actually. I had no idea what words were going to appear on my screen when I opened this window and began to write today’s blog. Literally had no clue. And here I am, plowing forward and it’s appearing before my eyes.

Seeing Ewan and Sue’s photos delivered the latest major example of it. For more than 16 months I’ve been working on this. Plowing forward every day. Rarely taking a day off. Feeling the physical side of it, with sore muscles in my neck and lower back, and aching in my fingers. It’s mental work, to write, but it’s physical as well.

And then… On May 24 of 2017, there were these two photos.

It’s a book.

And here’s the nutty part. I’ve been reading the digital proofs for so long I feel like I’ve had it in my hands for weeks, but that’s not true. I have 230 copies on their way to me, but…  They’re not here yet.

I still don’t have a copy in my own hands. But the chance to see these photos was enormously gratifying. Actual people have the book I created in their possession.

It’s a book. Hey everyone! I wrote a book!

Amazing. Can’t wait to have my own copy. Maybe I’ll autograph it to myself.

“To Bob. Great job. Your wrote a book!”

See ya next week, everybody. I think I deserve the rest of the day off.

Oh, as always, if you found this blog, and read this blog, and liked what you read, please “Like” it by clicking the button at the top.

And, if this is all news to you and you think you might like to actually buy this thing I made, just go to Amazon.com and type in the title. It’s a little thing called “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” and it’s a book.

Bob Wilber, at your service but still waiting for his own copy. Patience is a virtue.