Details On and an Invitation to Attend the First San Diego Writers Unite! Meeting
SPOILER ALERT!
Today’s blog is not what was advertised two weeks ago. Due to life circumstances, I will not have time to get done what needs to be done for a Writers Unite! meeting in February. My new goal is to host one in March. The location will still be San Diego. I’m looking at March 19 or March 12. I know those dates are out of time sequence, but the 19th is my first choice.
The rest of today’s blog will be about what I’ve learned about when a book is ready to go:
- To press
- To a publisher
I’ve written LOTS of stuff over my 65 years. More than my “fair share” of that stuff has been published.
- J. Weston Walch,
- Writer’s Digest,
- People’s Education,
- Grossmont Union High School District.
- Science Kit and Boreal Laboratories,
- Ward’s Biological Supply, and
- Koehlerbooks
Every entity on the list above has paid me for my stories, science activities, science lab books, or full science curriculum books. I also wrote and self-edited my Master’s Thesis and Doctoral Dissertation.
When I started writing fiction for publication as part of my retirement schedule, I thought I knew enough about getting stuff out that I could just “let if flow.”
I was wrong.
The phone conversation with John Koehler during the pitch of my first novel, Traveler’s HOT L – The Time Traveler’s Resort didn’t help me see the problem. It went something like this…
John: We like the book.
Me: Thank you.
John: Have you had it professionally edited?
At this point, my mind raced. What do they want to hear? I decided on telling the truth.
Me: No. I did everything you’ve got.
John: Well, it’s pretty clean…
Traveler’s went through two edits with Koehler. One for content and the other for style. Neither required major changes. I felt goooood.
Fast forward to the publication of Traveler’s HOT L Volume 2 – New Tales from the Time Traveler’s Resort.
I had submitted my first CreateSpace book, RIFTS – A Science Fiction Thriller, to two publishing houses and also received feedback from a copy editor in the industry before it went to press. Traveler’s 2 was my second book through CreateSpace.
Days after it went live, I received emails and FaceBook messages about errors. I corrected over 30 errors immediately. While on a trip to the Midwest, I took a copy of that book and carefully read through it, marking errors and making corrections in the margins as I read.
I made 300 corrections in that edit. By the time I’d fixed all those, I was averaging nearly one correction per page. That’s embarrassing and unacceptable.
I’ve been fortunate to connect with Sherry Frazier of Frazier Public Relations. She has slowed me down. My current project, The 5th Page, is a Detective/Mystery novel. I sent her what I felt was my final draft—80,000+ words—late last August. I spent the entire month of September in conversation and making notes and corrections in the manuscript.
Then, I spent all of November, re-writing the book. I added character development and backstory. I changed the flow to strict chronological. I used Grammarly and Hemingway to check gross spelling errors, usage, and reading levels. In other words, I did a bunch of stuff. Then it went to several Beta Readers.
The Beta Readers, while generally positive, gave good feedback and suggestions along with catching errors. The manuscript, now over 170,000 words, was ready… NOT! Sherry said, “Play it again, Sam.” Actually, she said to edit it again after letting it sit for 1-2 weeks.
Aside: I’ve found it helpful to my eyes/brain to change the background of the pages on my computer to black while looking for errors. I also increase the view magnification to 200%, The combination of those adjustments makes grammar, word use, typos LEAP off the page for me.
So, what? Take a look at the screenshots below. Those show changes I made in what I now think is my final edit. I decided to mark every change of any kind with yellow text. You can see that I still made MANY editorial changes.
AND, AGAIN, I'D THOUGHT THE PREVIOUS EDIT WAS THE LAST IT NEEDED.
Today, the manuscript formats to 700 pages in 6”x9” pages including front and end matter. It is a different quality book than it was August, a much better book than it was in November, and my pride and joy now.
Next blog: Something on the writing process. I haven’t a clue what at this moment.
e-mail: crd.author@gmail.com
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