This morning I stayed in bed until about 8 am – which is a huge lie-in for me. Apart from the fact I like to get up early, for the past few years I haven’t wanted to lie in bed, because my book was calling to me.
Today is a rest day. A well-deserved break. I had never realised that ‘just’ writing could be SO PHYSICALLY EXHAUSTING. And mentally draining, too. Or, the opposite – I have to force myself to stop working a good couple of hours before bed time, otherwise everything goes round in my brain for about five hours, before sleep comes.
Ridiculously, I forgot to celebrate my land-mark achievement of finally finishing the writing, because I hadn’t realised what I had done. Over the years I have ‘finished’ this book so many times, that it has become routine. But, every time I showed my fabulous work to someone, they showed me how I could improve it. Gradually, I also came to see the way forward for myself, as well.
To start, I looked at the book as a whole, and I could see that some chapters contained bits that would be better in other chapters, and moving them was a mega-effort.
Once that was completed, I did what Stephen King calls ‘killing your children’. It is a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE process where the author has to actually DELETE words, even whole passages – or worse, get rid of a subject altogether. Bye bye to Irene Mawer’s second husband’s first wife (she deserves a book of her own, an interesting woman. But she had to go.)
And then, breaking my heart, I chopped some poems down in length. When at least three people tell you the same thing, it is time to listen.
Following on from that, I then looked at all the quotes I had used. With one eye on word count, and the other on copyright, I cut the length of the quotes, and often paraphrased instead.
And my book is better for it. It is like having a haircut, or pruning a rose bush. The remaining work shines out much more efficiently and I am very pleased with the result.
You might think I could stop there. But, oh no, there is more. Once I had got the developmental flow of the book sorted out, I then looked at each and every line of text – every sentence. And I chopped out superfluous words. For example, in what I just wrote “each and every line of text,” I changed it to “each line of text”. That is only one word different, but from a starting point of 101,000 words, the end reduction is quite impressive.
So I could stop then, right? Erm, no. In this post that I am writing right now, I haven’t paid too much attention to grammar and punctuation. That is because I am drained, and I know that this post is a fleeting thing. However, I want my book to last and I want to be proud of it. So I have tried to sort out the technical bits of writing. I HAVE FAILED. I know I have failed, because I never learned the rules as a child, and although I am reading about them now, I am finding them tremendously hard to implement. Did you know that a comma sometimes goes inside speech marks, and sometimes outside them? Full stops, too. There are myriad other rules, which might as well be a foreign language to me. I have tried, I really have, but some of them I have just accepted are wrong and I am crossing my fingers that critics will be kind.
While looking at grammar, I could see that some passages were written in the most odd language – almost as if I had made up my own code. In my mind, I knew exactly what I was saying, but when I read it from the point of view of someone else, I could see it was just plain weird. So I had to re-write whole sections into understandable English, instead of gobbledygook.
So there I have it. It really is written. All that remains of the writing process now is to correct the typos which will be in there. I am blind to them, which is totally normal. It is a known fact that the eye just skips over the mistakes because the brain knows what should be there. If anyone wants to read a chapter just looking for typos, please let me know, I would be so grateful.
There is still a long way to go with the whole publishing process. First, I will ensure the Word document is still correctly formatted and that I haven’t accidentally knocked anything out of kilter. I need the formatting in Word to be correct, because from there, I will be putting the Word document into something called Atticus.
Atticus is the place where the manuscript will be formatted into a proper book, with all the pages in the correct place, as opposed to Word, which is just one long scroll. After Atticus, two things need to happen. I need to work out how to make the ebook, and I also need to work out how to get the work from Atticus on to Bookvault.
Bookvault is the place where the physical book will be printed. It will be Print On Demand (POD), which means anyone who wants a book just orders it online and an individual copy will be printed. As for the ebook, seven years ago, I set up an Amazon-author account and did a practise run. It was a long time ago, so I hope not too much has changed.
And then I have finished, right? Erm, no again. Once the text is correctly formatted at Bookvault, I can find out what size the spine will be (how wide). Once I know the size of the spine, and the size of the front and back cover (the trim size), I can then ask for help with the cover art for the book cover. I have already designed what I want, but just need a little help in finishing it off.
And then I’m done (except for learning how to actually sell it…)
