The first two sentences

On the first day of this New Year (2014), I sent in a new book to my edi­tor, cur­rent­ly titled See­ing Reds. A cou­ple of days lat­er I was going through my computer’s hard dri­ve and weed­ing out long-lost bits and pieces. In the process, I came across my first notes for that same book. It was only two sen­tences, but they had the germ of the cen­tral idea of the book, ref­er­enc­ing one par­tic­u­lar part of the plot. The point is those two sentences—according to my computer—were set down in 2006, which is to say eight years before I com­plet­ed the book. 

I was sur­prised. I can recall talk­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of writ­ing the book years ago, and had even men­tioned the notion to an edi­tor. That said, I had no idea it was that long ago.  What I also recall was that I was reluc­tant to write the book, think­ing that it would be too dif­fi­cult to do. As it turned out, the book was dif­fi­cult. While, appar­ent­ly, I was think­ing of writ­ing the book that many years ago, I have been work­ing on it for four years, which is long for me. 

Now that I have gone this far, a num­ber of friends (as well as the edi­tor) are read­ing the book. I won­der how long I will have to wait for a reac­tion. Here is hop­ing it is not eight years.