Last week, there were some new beginnings and some welcome endings.
Yes, we welcomed in a new year and said goodbye (and good riddance!) to an old, but more importantly (for me anyway), I finished the edits on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Reapers.
Yay, me!
The edits, which should have taken me about a week to do at the most, maybe even less if I had really hustled, ended up taking me every single day of the three months my that my publisher gave me to get it done.
I blame this on several things—from surgery complications (which led to me having subsequent tests and more doctor appointments) to the holidays, a variety of family interruptions, and finally, to me getting sick for a few days.
The important part to take away from this, however, is that the latest round of edits are DONE!
Well...at least for now, anyway.
You see, the thing no one tells you when you initially decide to write a book and try to get it published is exactly how many times you’ll end up having to read it.
There’s the first draft you’ll have to reread, of course. And then the second, which involves doing some major editing to fix the mess you made of the first one. And maybe there’s a third draft you’ll go through—if you’re still not happy with it... Then there are the changes your Beta Readers will suggest that you may or may not want to make, and if you’re going to query agents, you’ll have to reread it all again—just in case.
Once you get an agent, that’s not nearly the end of it, though. You see, there’s another round of reading you’ll need to do and even more edits that will go with it—this time courtesy of your agent. You’ll also have to format it to whatever standard the agency wants you to use.
But that should finally be the last of it—right?
Wrong.
Once a publisher says they want your book, they’ll have some changes for you to make too.
Which is where I am for the moment. I made the changes, sent it back to them...and now...we wait...because at some point, the manuscript will return to me with more suggested changes, then there will be another copy to look over, and yet one (or more) times to look over it again before everyone decides they’ve had enough and just can’t take reading it anymore, or hopefully, it is as clean and shiny as the publisher thinks it can get it, and it’s ready to send to the printers. (Where no doubt, one tiny comma, missing word, or a ‘the’ will sneak by spelled ‘teh’ or something even worse else will slip by. (Okay, hopefully not, but it happens...)
Meanwhile, I said this is a post about new beginnings, too, which brings me to my next announcement...
I am officially working on Book Two of The Grim Reaper Chronicles...
How to Stop Worrying and Start Dying
I’ve been unofficially working on it for several months now already, but I’m the queen of procrastination (and of poor time management), so now I’ve got about two months to finish it. That’s doable, but I’m going to have to get a lot more organized and possibly temporarily move to a cabin out in the middle of nowhere with no phone or Internet so that I can work without distractions.
Wish me luck!
-CA-
Comments