The Book Is Done — Also, what should I do in Austin?

A few months ago, in a breathtaking display of naivete, I announced that I had finished writing the book. Yay!  The hard work was done!

I could not have been more wrong.  That was 8 drafts ago.  The work was just beginning.  It was a good lesson to learn, if a painstaking, grueling, but mostly enjoyable one.  Syllable by syllable, over and over and over.

On Monday I got an email from my editor that nearly made me scream with relief.

“I’m accepting your manuscript and sending it on to copyediting.”

What this means is: Stop writing and revising. It’s as good as we can make it. 

There are going to be some minor changes when I’m reading the copyedited manuscript, but the book is, for all intents and purposes, publishable.

Now copyediting will go over the manuscript to set it up for publication while I finally get a chance to take a breath and do other things. And look at myself in the mirror and say, “Oh, hey, aren’t you that author I keep hearing about?”

As I added up the many false starts, recreations, and chapters that ultimately just didn’t work, I wrote over 1200 pages to get to the 290-something that will be the actual text you will read.

It was worth it.  And now that I can look back at it, I have to say that I enjoyed climbing the mountain more than I like standing on top of it. Getting here gave me purpose.

Now, until touring, marketing, and promoting consume me next year, it’s time to go find another mountain.

Oh, and I’ll be speaking in Austin this weekend.  I’d love some suggestions as to what I should do while I’m there.

 

Tagged as: book deals, book editing, book writing