A Book Update

by Dean Kramer 
April, 2002


After writing diligently for these past several weeks I feel finished with my manuscript. Last night I organized it into a coherent whole and sent it to Margot, my agent and my friend, who will help me with the polishing and fine-tuning before it goes to the publisher whose editor will have ideas of his/her own for me to consider.

Putting a book together is a lot like cooking a meal with a bunch of people. Everyone has their own techniques, adds their own ingredients, and contributes their own taste preferences. Even though each of the essays is mine the book, when it's finished, will contain contributions other than mine simply via the process of its being brought to completion.

In a sense, this is not unlike living with MS and a team of caregivers. I have MS. The MS I have is mine to experience. But I get suggestions from my doctors, my friends, my family members, and my pharmaceutical company (among others) as to how I might best express my being-with-MS. Sometimes I'm defensive about this and I rant about how nobody but me (or another with the disease) has any right to tell me or could possibly understand and yada-yada-yada. At other times I am more open to others and can listen to their ideas and perhaps, in my way of experiencing MS, make changes that incorporate some of those ideas. In a sense, then, my MS is not mine in isolation. Everyone with whom I have a close relationship has a relationship with my MS as well. The boundaries of this situation have, always, to be negotiated and renegotiated.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this cool spring morning at Cripple Creek. I'm content that the manuscript is done. And I'm open to all the suggestions I anticipate receiving as Life On Cripple Creek continues on its way to publication.