Hello, my name is Jilly. I’m proud to say I’ve been book-free for one week.

Yes – it is true. Last week (in fact, Thursday 25th May), I sent the book off to the editors and received a lovely email in return thanking me for following the preparation guidelines so thoroughly.

Of course, the paper I submitted this week was missing a figure heading.

Writing the book has been an amazing experience. Even my PhD didn’t give me so much freedom to really dive into a subject and (forgive how academic this sounds) think about a subject.

So what happens when you write a book?

• That quip about it being another, longer PhD on top of your full time job was absolutely true
• You will lose all sympathy for PhD students, which is wrong, because you brought this on yourself.
• You will swear you’ll never write another (and secretly really hope the second is easier)
• The “I should be writing” guilt is real. It follows you around pubs and parks, a spectral apparition lurking at the corner of your vision of yourself hunched over a laptop.
• It’s amazing how much more energy you have when the spectral apparition is gone – I suddenly feel capable of painting the living room
• Somebody will publish an inflammatory paper before you submit your book. You will have a little cry.
• The weakest part of your creative process (for me that’s always been editing) will improve – but it’ll still be your weakest part. By far.
• You’re going to be really nervous about whether or not people actually like it – a nice email from your editor will make you burst into blubbering tears.

The next part of the process will take about eight months, I think, so expect to see the book early in 2018. I am very excited, and very nervous about how it will be received. I really hope people like it. I might even quite like the opportunity to do this again at some point (something about science literacy in general . . .)

But right now I’m really enjoying having absolutely nothing to do at evenings and weekends. This is fun.