Freshman Author Lessons Learned – The Writing is the Easy Part!
Maybe it’s just me? The writing was exhilarating. I was surprising myself with what came next. The characters became part of my everyday life and I wondered what they were up to.
Disciplined writing times helped me find my groove, and when I was in that flow state, little else existed. 4:00-6:00 am and 9:30-11:30 pm on weekdays, bookending my long professional workdays gave me a creative start, and a nice end of day escape. Bad weather weekend days were welcome; allowing me to hunker down and write for hours on end. Wake up, coffee, write. Family wakes up, make them breakfast, get them settled for the day, and then go back to writing. And then there were the times that writing had to stop. Powder day! Spring snowmelt, time to get on the river! Basketball games, family time. All the things that are part of life stayed part of life; but even in those moments, scene ideas would come to me and I could just discreetly put them into my phone during the roar of the crowd for the buzzer-beating shot. Why? Because I also wanted to know what was going to happen.
I was not one of those people that had the whole plot charted out. Writing was a being in the moment adventure. And that made writing the book was the easy part.
I was not prepared for what came next.
EDITING. Sure, I edited a bit as I went. Re-reading what I had wrote the night before in the morning, cleaning it up a bit, then moving on. I figured as a professional communicator who edits other people’s work nearly daily, that I would be absolutely excellent at editing my own book and could save some money there. WRONG! I read the whole novel front to back twice trying to find my own errors and learned that this is pretty much impossible. DO NOT try to edit your own work! So, after eating the humble pie, I hired a freelance editor. Here is my advice on editing:
- Give yourself plenty of time. Editing done well is not done quick. Editing done quick is not done well. Spend the time needed yourself, and then with your editor, and then again with yourself, and then maybe with a few friends reading your book to make sure you have caught all of the mistakes. You might be asking how much time is plenty of time? I can share my experience. From the time I finished my last sentence of the book until the time of final proofing for print it was eight months (85,000 words).
- Get a recommendation for a good editor. There are so many options. So many freelance sites. For me, I wanted someone I could talk to and was surprised how many people did not take phone calls and only communicate over email. Maybe this works for some people. Not for me, I want to hear reactions and understand their feedback. I did talk to some pretty amazing people through Reedsy. Good editors are out there, be sure to shop around.
- Be clear about expectations and timeframes. When you set up your editing contract, be clear about your expectations going in. And also know what you will do if those expectations are not met. For example, the editor proposes that they will get edits back on the first 25,000 words within one week. That is great, right? What happens if they don’t? Do you not pay them? Reduced pay for every day they are late? Know how flexible you are. Is there a margin of error for mistakes? What if they do a terrible job? Are you still bound to pay them the agreed upon rate? Do you need some sort of clause in the contract about quality of services? This is another reason to go with a recommendation of a known-quantity editor; read the reviews on the freelance site. Ask for references!
- Closely review the proposed edits. Don’t just do a blanket accept track changes and assume everything is good. Two revisions later with my editor, I was still finding errors. I have no basis to know if this is normal. Not criticizing my editor, they did a pretty good job. They helped me round out a few rough edges. They caught about 80% of the spelling and grammar mistakes. Most of all, they helped me ensure I was in the right tense. But they also tried to cut out my voice and a few snippets that might not resonate with the majority of readers, but that are things I felt incredibly important to include. So, I had to ask myself the hard question; if they did not like it, would others? Really look at what changes are being proposed and make sure that it is not going to change what it is you are trying to say.
PUBLISHING PROCESS. I will break this up into two parts. Traditional publishing vs. self-publishing. I am NOT an expert in either of these process. However, I did just pursue both paths, and can share my personal experience from the journey. The main take-away here is TIME. Yes, more of your precious time. You, like I am, are probably so eager to just get your book out there. Don’t slow down or give up or cut corners now. You are almost there. How you will publish is a huge decision. What I found is most first-time authors are forced into the self-publishing route unless they have years to wait, know someone in the industry, or are a literary genius. Here are a few of my lessons learned.
- TRADITIONAL Publishing. Wow! Talk about frustrating and pretty confusing. To get published by any major outlet, or even many minor outlets, you have to have a literary agent. So, how do you get an agent? Well, I spent countless hours, and I mean many many hours researching this very question. I subscribed to websites and listservs. I scanned websites and QueryTracker. I made notes of all of the people working in my genre that seemed to be looking for books like mine. And then I spent many many more hours crafting individual letters about why I picked them. And was rejected by all of them. Granted, I only sent out about a dozen. But as a person that already works 50 hours a week at a regular job, that has a teenage child that plays sports, that has to manage a household, and that really likes to get outside and adventure and have fun; I realized this path forward was just not sustainable or viable for me. I wrote a book for fun, and I wanted it published. I learned that it’s really hard for freshman, debut novelists to get picked up. All of the rejection letters, and many websites say things like “don’t give up” and “keep trying, someone will pick you up.” I just did not have the luxury of time to keep hunting down an agent, and trying to manage the who has responded and who hasn’t, etc. So after a few months of trying the traditional publishing route, I decided to pursue self-publishing for this first novel.
- SELF-Publishing. There are whole books dedicated to how to do this well. I did not read them, but they are out there. I just went onto Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing site and read their instructions and figured out what I needed to do to make that happen. You have options, to just make your book an e-reader; or you can also set it up to print in paperback or hardback. There may be other options too. For me, I have spent so many hours on this book, I want to hold it in my hands. Thus, began my education in print layout. KDP actually makes this pretty easy with some simple formatting instructions. However, my Word document did not translate to PDF like I had hoped. So, in went about another couple dozen hours of laying the book out for e-reader and print. NOTE: know what size book you will want to print before moving into any sort of layout mode! A quick search of how to format for print on the web will yield you a wealth of info on this topic. This blog post is only to say that for me, it was super rewarding to know I did this all myself. That also means that if something is off, I am the only one to blame.
MARKETING. Are you really close to having your book completed? Meaning, it is not only written, but also edited and on its way to being ready for print? If so, from everything I have garnered, you should already be on a dozen social media platform groups telling everyone about it. Have I done this, nope! I did start up an Instagram account a while back but have not had time to do much with it. I did create this webpage; but as you can see, it is pretty bare bones. I know marketing is a huge part of determining your book’s success. And this is where I am at right now! My book will hopefully come out in two short weeks. So, I will spend that time trying to generate some buzz, somehow. I plan to talk to a few local bookstores and see if they will carry the book and allow me to do a reading/signing event. I pray that some people will get my book early, love it, and review it (positive reviews if I am lucky). So, more to come on this!
I guess to sum it all up…
The writing was the easy part for me. All of this business stuff has taken way more time and energy than I ever expected. In the end, I have faith that it will be worth it.