A Finished Book
Posted 01 Nov 2016
editing
Watchers of my Asimov Hour daily journal will already know this, and I can't believe I didn't get around to posting this last Tuesday, but:
Flotsam is done!
In my editor's words, "It requires no further monkeying."
So naturally, I tried to bargain with him for more changes. It took me about 48 hours to receive what my editor told me: My book was fine. FINE. There was nothing I wanted to do with it that would have improved it.
So two days after my editor saying to me that the book was ready to go, I actually believed him.
The only changes I made (because I excel at monkeying) were two things:
- First, I broke the existing chapters into a more regular size, where possible. Some of my chapters had grown as I fleshed out the story and worked in those last revisions, and I didn't want to toss eight-to-eleven thousand word chapters at the reader. My editor cautioned me against messing up my pacing, so there were many places where I let a chapter be extra long or extra short in the interest of not killing the pace I set.
- Second, I did change a background character's name. The decision was made in the blink of an eye, with no heartbreak on my part over it, and I did it to break up similar names that specifically had to do with that character's portions of the story.
So that was October 19, and my editor went over my next steps with me the next evening in a coaching Skype meeting. That left me with 11 days in October, before NaNoWriMo began (today!), to keep myself from going stir crazy.
I've been working on the map for Flotsam, and have a line drawing in the early ARC! The final image will be included in the pre-publication ARCs.
I wrote to the illustrator who will create my cover art to confirm I'm on the schedule we discussed for having her create my covers next year.
I wrote ten queries for my editor to look over. This was largely an exercise aimed at learning how to talk (succinctly) about my story when people ask me about them, and to create the sales copy for book listing pages.
I've prepared my Book 2 Scrivener package per the outline that my editor also said is in good shape.
I prepped handouts for my regional NaNoWriMo group, hosted a Kick-off Dinner, and wrote several ML newsletters to go out.
And I revised my Phantom Traveler vignette #1, and began vignette #2.
Now that I'm here at the cusp of beginning book 2, I find myself very anxious about the process. As I said in this morning's Asimov Hour, I believe it's a manifestation of Imposter Syndrome. That voice has taken up the evidence: It took me 12 years to write my first book. How can I expect to write the sequel in anything less than that? I'm surely running low on creativity. I'm not as familiar with the story as I am with the first book. What if I told the whole story and the rest is boring and unworthy of the bytes an eBook would be printed on?
Luckily, beginning NaNoWriMo will give me no time to worry about such things. It's write or sink, so I'll leave those thoughts to worry about in December, if you don't mind.
I've added the word count widget to the right margin of this site, so if you're not viewing on mobile you can check on that every day. I'll also include it in my Tuesday blog posts on my process and craft. As such:
