The Weird Accordion to Al Book and the Problem of Stopping

I’m not gonna lie. When I launched the Kickstarter for the Weird Accordion to Al book and the response was overwhelming and overwhelmingly positive, I was touched and flattered almost beyond words by your faith in me, my vision and my abilities. But I was also concerned. What if the book didn’t live up to expectations? What if I wrote the same damn thing over and over again? 

Besides, the Weird Accordion to Al had two solid years of stubbornly refusing to find anything beyond a tiny, devoted audience online that never seemed to exceed five hundred readers when I launched a shockingly lucrative, successful crowd-funding campaign for its book adaptation. 

Why should The Weird Accordion to Al find a sizable audience as a book when it failed to do so as a column over a period of years? 

The answer, I was pleased to discover, is that The Weird Accordion to Al not only makes MORE sense as a book; it pretty much only makes sense as a book. Of course a non-“Weird Al” Yankovic-centric audience is not going to be riveted by a thousand word essay on “Gotta Boogie” or “She Never Told Me She Was a Mime.” 

As an intermittently published, grammatically sloppy 189 part online series, The Weird Accordion to Al was almost designed for obscurity. As a lovingly illustrated, extensively copy-edited book, on the other hand, The Weird Accordion to Al makes all the sense in the world. It holds together gorgeously as one long narrative with all manner of twists and turns but it also demands to be read, or re-read, piece-meal, preferably by nerds using the bathroom. 

Reading The Weird Accordion to Al as one long text I was overjoyed to discover that it was shockingly better than I had expected. My first cut of the book ran an endless 133,000 words. To give you a sense of just how long that is, the typical book is about 65,000 words, so that’s twice the size of the average book. Ah, but I had only begun to edit! I trimmed a good twenty-five thousand words from there, and then another ten thousand before I sent it to Al for what I foolishly imagined would be the final edit. 

I did two more drafts after Al’s copy-editing and with each successive pass a book that was already terrific got better and better. Usually, when I’m finishing a book I re-read its contents so many times that at a certain point the words lose all meaning. You become deadened to your own words and your own work from over-exposure. 

That has not happened to me with The Weird Accordion to Al. Like Al’s music, the more exposure I have to it, the more I like it. Part of the reason I’ve done so many drafts of my book is because it gives me yet another excuse to read what is rapidly becoming my favorite book.

Felipe’s illustrations make a big difference. His brilliant work legitimately makes the book twice as good.

The problem with improving a manuscript with each successive edit is that it makes me want to never stop editing my book, to do draft after draft after draft after draft in a furious quest for perfection. 

But you need to stop. You really do, if only because there is an audience for the book and that audience deserves to have The Weird Accordion to Al book in their hands.

I’m proud of the writing I did on The Weird Accordion to Al book but I’m as proud, if not prouder, of the editing I did on it as well. I love the words I wrote but I also love how many words and ideas and jokes did not make it into the final version.

I’m not just happy with The Weird Accordion to Al in its current form; I’m overjoyed by it. It’s not just in a good enough state: it’s terrific, albeit in a way that could still be improved by yet another draft. 

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place by pledging over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace/merch

and/or buy the Weird Accordion to Al book here