Before I begin, allow me to apologize for my dereliction of duty not only today (that's a gentle way of saying "no column today, folks!"), but over the past weeks and months. I have, as many of you know, been distracted by trying to put together sample chapters of a book. This has led to a certain amount of neglect here at the site, which I do feel bad about and do apologize for.

But today, I have a minor announcement: the final push is on. By the end of this weekend, I will have put together a "final draft" of my sample chapters. In other words, the end is in sight, people.

While we're on the subject, I'd like to personally and publicly thank everyone who has taken the time and effort to aid me in this project by reviewing earlier drafts. Your help has had profound impacts on my writing and editing, and hopefully editing future chapters won't be nearly as hard because I'll be using new-found good grammatical habits in the first place. This will save an enormous amount of time.

In creating anything, however, at some point you just have to say "Enough!" and call it over and done with. That's the point I'm approaching, and should reach within days. It won't be perfect -- but then no piece of writing ever is. It will, however, be more perfect than those aforementioned earlier drafts, because of your help. I say this as bait for a certain type of perfectionist who is itching to comment that "more perfect" is improper, since "perfect" is really a superlative. This is the same urge of those who tried to talk a notable bunch of authors out of using "unalienable" since it's not really a proper word ("inalienable," they would insist, should be used instead).

Assuming everyone recognizes those examples, they prove my point. No writing is perfect. What I will (hopefully) achieve, though, in my final draft is "good enough." Good enough to catch the eye of some literary agent, editor, or publisher who is interested enough to keep reading -- even through the inevitable minor grammatical errors.

To put this another way entirely, once done with this draft, these chapters won't be touched again until someone is paying me to re-edit them. I will cheerfully argue arcane punctuation and grammar with an editor who is working with me to get the manuscript ready for publication. But I'm done with reworking it for now.

Having said all of that, the real reason I'm writing this today (other than to apologize for the lack of a Thursday column during such a momentous week) is to invite everyone interested to read what I've come up with. Those who have previously edited a draft, there is no need for you to do anything -- I will be sending out an email to everyone on the list when the new draft is available. But for anyone who slipped through my dragnet of getting as many reviewers as possible -- for those of you who have never seen a previous draft -- if you'd like to see what I've been working on, let me know either through email or just by leaving an "I'd like to see it!" comment here. I will be in touch with you via email if you do so, and will give you instructions as to how to download a copy (fair warning: it's about 160 pages long).

Looking forward, I will spend the next couple of weeks finishing up the "sales job" part of my book proposal, and then I will start trolling the waters for agents and publishers. But the milestone I will hit this weekend should allow me more time to focus on the blog, one way or another.

So thanks for everyone's extended patience and thanks for sticking with the site through the admittedly thin period that should now hopefully be drawing to a close. It's been a much longer journey than I ever thought it would be, but the end is indeed now in sight.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant