I spent the past week indexing my upcoming book, Watching Jekyll and Hyde. It is not something I do for fun.
Indexing is an important part of writing a nonfiction book. I’ve included them even in my self-published ones. They are, however, a pain in the butt. A simple mechanical task but long and tedious. An IT friend told me I could have AI do it but I’d still have to check every entry and make sure it was right (“It wasn’t me, the AI got it wrong!” is guaranteed to destroy any respect the listener might have). Plus it’s an added tool for spotting errors: if there’s a Greg Hatcher and a Greg Hitcher in the book, I know to check whether they’re the same person with a misspelled name.
(While I didn’t index Greg, I do mention him in the book. His column on Bruce Banner as a metaphor for blackout drinking fits with my broader discussion of Jekyll and Hyde stories as a metaphor for substance abuse).
I’d hoped to get the first part of the work — listing all the names and topics in order — before I got the galleys back showing the finished manuscript. That didn’t work out so I spent a long day doing that. Then came the tedious job of going through the book, page by page, and fitting page numbers to the names. That took four long days.
And now it’s done. All I have to do is wait for my author copies to arrive, then announce it far and wide.
Like Sgt. Rock I’m feeling battered, beaten, exhausted. But not finished (of course, neither is the Rock of Easy Company). A little rest this weekend and I will be back in the land of the living.
