Writing Journey: Journal Entry 13

March 31, 2021

Day 177, Week 25

• Words: 77,901 (18,429 revised out)
• Revised Chapters: 34
• Ego Size: Peppercorn
• Emotional State: I’m not a writer

I’ve finished the first round of revisions. I’ve wrapped up as many holes as I could, tightened up chapters, and put the manuscript to bed for a bit. In two weeks or so, I’ll start revising it again with the help of my editor. I have to say, I wish I had more time away from it. I need it to not be the fresh unpolished turd I think it may be before I can approach it with enthusiasm.

But here I am. This is the process I signed up for, so this is what I’m doing. To be fair, I will most likely be all over it when we start revising it – fresh off the high of my pre-sale campaign starting with a bang (Friday, it starts this Friday.) Or at least I hope so.

But here’s the thing. I know I’m getting feedback from the AE and she did add comments to some of my chapters. Upon reading some of the comments, my first thought was, ‘Did you not read my book?’ And then I realized that maybe she had and I wasn’t as clear as I thought I was. Down the rabbit hole of I suckville I go.

So while I do want to get my book to a really good place, I’m also slightly terrified of what her overall feedback is going to be and just how much more work I need to put into this book so that it can achieve not quite crap status.

In other fun news, my campaign goes live this Friday. 3 pm EST. Yep. I’ll be selling my soul on social media for the cost of an expensive e-book or paperback. And I dread it. So I do what I always do when something I don’t want to comes up – I throw myself at it balls to the wall. Because the other response is to just not do it and that is not an option here.

My spreadsheet is filled out with four weeks of non-stop social media action across all my platforms. I’ve set some stuff up for the first week, although I think I need to shift dates and put all the really good stuff (pulled the dredges of my book) in weeks 2 and 3 when interest wanes. Do I expect random people from social media to buy my book? No, but I hope they do and if I don’t tell them its out there, then they’ll never buy it.

And in this state of grey that is currently me and my novel, I attended a Creator Speakers series conversation with VE Schwab. And she said so many amazing things that not only do I need to get the transcript so that I get it right, but also I’ll be sharing it on this blog at some point (and the rest of social media. But for today, I wanted to focus on one or two of her comments – a bit garbled since I wrote them down. When I heard them, my shoulders dropped, the tightness eased, and I felt a little bit of relief.

“The only way you won’t get to where you want to go is to quit.”

“If you’re struggling with a story or a concept, it’s not a question of your ability, but that this is hard. Writing is hard.”

Do I think my book sucks? No, not really. I think I have some great stuff in there, but it does need work and polish to be as good as I can get it. And that’s really the thing I need to remember – getting it to as good as I can get it. No one can expect any more from you than that, right?

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