Is it done yet? Are we there yet?
I’ve been asked about this a few times, so here is kinda’ sorta’ how things will go before the next book shows up for your viewing pleasure. (hopefully.)
At the ongoing rate of keyboard poundage, my current ETA based on the outline will be about 3 months until the 1st draft gets a “The End” typed.
That estimate is based on an outline roughly equaling about 225k words for the manuscript. One that is done, ye old hack and slash time occurs (killing mah childrens as it were).
I follow Stephen King’s mantra of:
1st draft – 10% = 2nd draft.
Once that is done, the brick goes to my 1st reader who will do a pass and then give feed back. Then, I’ll do another pass, slashing and burning and adjusting based on said feedback. THEN (deep breath)…
3rd draft goes to my editor….who will red pen the shit out of it…and I’ll get it back to scrub and wash some more.
Right about this time is when my brain starts to whine that it no longer wishes to see the words anymore. It wants to do cool funzy ™ things, like, ya know, WRITING STORIES THAT HAVEN’T BEEN WRITTEN YET!!!
That becomes 4th draft which then gets line edited (by moi) for silly issues. —this is where I run it through an automated grammar checker to find the niggling bits that tend to get overlooked by human eyes.
———————THEN the 5th draft goes to the proof editor who will hunt for stupid stuff and mis-mangled left overs from all of the above.
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At this point (6th draft), I’ll pass a few copies out to “beta readers” for feedback.
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Corrections/fixes adjustments and such happen to make it the 7th draft…and if all goes well here, this is what gets pushed off to “press”, as it were.
At this point, I sit back, drink many beers, yell and shout to the heavens that the process is complete…and THEN…type “Chapter 1” on the next one and start the deal all over again.
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This entire process will be smoother than with the first book. I was learning the whole shebang with indy publishing, editing, printing, (paper and ebooks) with that first title, and got it to a few folks in an “earlier state” than I probably should have. Their feedback was positive, (go me!) and I used this time to make corrections and move on.
My saving grace regarding all of that was the decision early on NOT to really push the marketing side until the 3rd book is in the channel. This sentence could have its own blog post, and I’ll probably ruminate on the ick that is “marketing” at some point, but right now, I’m sipping a fine IPA and do not wish to harsh my mellow. 😀
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