I'M DONE WITH MY BOOK!
Except lol I'm not
Hello Friends!!
I’M DONE WITH MY BOOK!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My husband bought me some celebratory Prosecco and we toasted to the momentous occasion.
Amazing, right????? Honestly, I’m feeling super good about it. I’m happy with my prose and what I’m sharing on the page. I’m happy with what it’s trying to do without trying to do everything. I do not feel the need to make it perfect, because there is no perfect. People are going to feel however they want about this book and that’s none of my nevermind. I hope they like it! I hope YOU like it! (I’ll let you know as soon as the pre-order stuff is ready.)
Can you feel the but coming? But of course I’m not done with the book. I’m not done with the book in the sense that it’s going to (likely) go to copyediting next and it’ll come back to me at least one if not two more times and I’ll have to go through it and double, triple check that everything is where it’s supposed to be. I’m not done in the sense that there’s a mountain of marketing and promotion ahead of me and that is part of the whole writing a book thing, too.
And I’m also not done because I discovered a list on my desk of things I forgot to do, lol. I need to check the end of each chapter to see if it feels right to do a kind of takeaway box or element. I need to double check that the internal logic of each chapter works and isn’t just organized how it came out of my head. I need to go in and change a mention of Good Morning, America to the TODAY Show because even though it doesn’t matter, I meant TODAY not GMA when I wrote it. I also need to cite a source for an anecdote I use about Stephen King, which I kinda got half wrong on the first time through. These are not critical changes (except the logic one and the takeaway one.) I can do the TODAY show one and the King one in the next pass, but since I’m already in the manuscript, I’ll just do it now. This is the last time I’ll have the opportunity to make BIG changes to the book, like moving whole sections or paragraphs, or rewriting more than half a sentence. I cannot do that after it’s been copyedited unless absolutely necessary, and in a might get sued way and not a I want it that way way.
Tbh, I will be happy when the time for big changes is over. Not because I’m sick of looking at it, which I am a little bit, and not because I’m anxious to be done with it, which I am a little bit. It just feels done. It’s doing what I want it to do. If I want to do other things, hopefully there will be other books for that. I’m good. It feels right to be (mostly) done.
The next phase feels like an exciting adventure. It’ll be hard and time consuming and uncertain, but I know, too, that I will do what I can do and the rest is up to the universe (and y’all telling all your friends). I’m not going to hit the New York Times Best Seller list because book like mine just don’t do that1. That’s ok! That’s not a failure! It’s reality! It’ll surprise me in other ways, and I can’t wait to find out how.
I wish you all the same peace and optimism at the end of all your current and future projects.
XOXOXOOXOX,
Kate
I will happily go on the TODAY show, though!
As an editor let me say yay for you, for finishing and a hip hip hooray for you for going back again and again until you are happy with it, and so is your copyeditor. As I always tell clients, in ten years you won't remember if the book came out in this month or that month but the quality of the book (good or bad) lasts forever.
That part when you’re done with your book but your book is not done with you.