Working on Visits With Angels and We Meet in Dreams: A Mystic’s Journal Entry: January 3, 2010.

Sunday, January 3

Last week I began working with the editor on We Meet in Dreams; she has made many useful suggestions, and corrections to the manuscript.  I have already scribbled down many new lines and passages to add to the book, in the margins and on the blank sheets between chapters.  All these need to be rewritten and typed into the ms.  A daunting task, and also means the entire ms will need to be proofed again.  And possibly more corrections.  M. e-mailed me from South Africa with more material to add to the book: one of her ‘dreams’ for the book was about her friends’ cottage in South Africa - she had never been to their house, but decided to visit them this trip, and the cottage looked just like the one in her dream visit to them. So it is proof of sorts that her dream was not an ordinary, psychological dream - but an actual dream visit to where they live.

Diana has completed her other professional tasks and has resumed work on Visits With Angels, after a month or so off.  This afternoon she once again started sending me proofs of pages from Visits With Angels that she had newly formatted, for corrections.  We had a few ‘widows’ (a single word left at the end of a paragraph, alone at the start of a line) and ‘orphans’ (a single line of ms stranded by itself at the top of a new page) that needed to be addressed.  In some cases I needed to either add or subtract words from a paragraph - I others I needed to break up a paragraph to create an extra line of blank text.  I admire Diana’s work very deeply and so am more than willing to make these small changes where I can.  We also had discussions on footnotes and other aspects of the book, including headers at the top of each page.  Decided not to use ibid as footnotes, ibid sounds like a small, dangerous animal to me ...  Instead we will just repeat the title of books or stories in footnotes.  We are a little more than halfway through the volume.

I meet with the editor again tomorrow, about We Meet In Dreams, hopefully our last meeting.  Then I start typing in the final changes before the next proofing - and then the entire ms will be sent to Diana to format.  Once in her hands we will again be searching for widows and orphans and other lost family members, making corrections and decisions of all sorts.  And then the final proof, which only I can do.  In the end, the final decisions are mine - and a bit of a responsibility.

Diana wrote that she has started thinking about the cover of We Meet in Dreams, and contacted a friend who takes photographs of the stars through his telescope.  We decided on stars for the cover for several reasons - although we had many different ideas for the cover, and some of them fairly intriguing ...  We’ll see how it all progresses once we have the photographs.  

In addition, I received another “dream” example last night, which I am adding to We Meet in Dreams, from one of my young meditation students.  I need to work on it before I see the editor tomorrow afternoon, and write an introduction to it and some analysis at the end - it will conclude that section of the book. And it is almost midnight.  Diana will call me in a few hours from Texas, we have some things to discuss ...  And basically: we are now working on two books at the same time.  

It has been snowing for days now, thin little fluffy flakes.  They are too small to stick to the roads, and barely stay on the sidewalks - mainly I just push them aside when I shovel, to the rim of the grass, and then scatter more salt.  They are small but persistent; I have already used up more than a canister of salt. With wind chill, it has been hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit, but it is wonderful to be outside in the fresh air.  Now to get back to work on the books ...