I am almost ready to publish my work!
It has been an adventure; writing “The Girl That Danced with Spirits” has been a part of my daily life for a year now! As I switched from writing in the morning and sometimes in the evening to editing, I realised how much work goes into finalising a book for publishing. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that editing and formatting might have taken me longer than drafting my first manuscript!
Through the whole process, I learned a lot of new things. Especially recently, as I was doing my final checks before handing it to Lara for proofreading, sometimes I would look at a page and think – perfect, amazing. Then, other times, I will spend an hour looking at the word ‘Molotov’ and think – “That’s out of place.” Then I will change the word 10 times, make it as it was, add an author’s note, rephrase the sentence, and change the paragraph. Then I will look at my page and I’ll undo it all. “Historical accuracies, my ass!”
The biggest hurdle in the whole process is definitely time. I have a full-time job, so I can’t just write whenever I feel like it. While at work, I will get these ideas popping into my head; I’ll develop them, grow them and get excited to put them into the work. After that, I will forget about it and go on a completely different route, depending on how I feel. That’s not always the case, a lot of the major plot points came about and got disputed in my head while I was doing my day job. In a way, it helped me filter out the less desirable scenarios.
As I edited over paragraphs and rewrote and reworded much of the book, it became exactly how I wanted it to be at one point. No more second thoughts, no more “It should be like this.” That moment of making something you are so happy with you are afraid to touch it. At that point, I ran it through a spell and grammar check one last time, JUST IN CASE, and gave it to Lara; that was yesterday.
The last steps I have to take are to finish the cover, update this post, and start the publishing process. I am excited for anyone to read my work! I never thought I would publish one year after I first picked up the hobby. As my story grew a little bit at a time, I started to get excited for someone to actually read it!
If you have read my story, thank you!
Excited for this!! 💕
Good post. I learn something new and challenging on websites I stumbleupon on a daily basis.
It’s always exciting to read articles from other writers and
use a little something from other websites.