Many people believe that once you have your story written, and you’ve been so fortunate as to get a publisher to publish it, your job is done. Whoa! Not so fast, Pilgrim! For, in reality, the hard work is just beginning. “Writing the story is the easy part,” says Elise Whyles, the alter ego of my publisher, with whom I chatted last night. “You’ve got to polish, polish, polish, through the editing, and promote, promote, promote.” Thus speaks the voice of knowledge and experience. I don’t know how long she has been doing this; writing professionally and publishing, but at a guess I’d say at least 20 years.
Many authors in her stable groan about the 4 edits process, and procrastinate on doing them as long as they can, but my own approach differs. She gives us 2 weeks in which to complete the current edit, but I pretty much always have it back to her within 5 days. After writing for 50 years without a publisher for over 50 years, I am still so excited at the prospect of getting published that I view the edits as an opportunity to improve my brainbaby and turn it into a product of worth that people will want to buy and read.So I lose no time in going through the edit, improving it as I go. The most time that’ll pass between receiving and getting to work on it will be about 10 hours, 2 for television viewing, and 8 for getting my beauty sleep. But if I talk to her in the morning, and she says “Check your inbox,” I go there and it’s there, why, then no time will pass between my receiving it and starting to work on it.
Promotion: these blogs are part of the promotion process. I also belong to e very romance email group I could possibly find online. Usually I just pass them by, but soon I shall have to actually post to them. All this goes on while I am writing the next story I shall submit for publication. So it’s not unusual for a writer to be simultaneously working on up to four WIPs (Works In Progress) or even more. A writer I chatted with in the /MeWe group “The Black Hole” told me that at the moment he was juggling 6 books. How do we do this juggling feat? Well, I don’t know how anyone else does it, but as for me, I’m a great believer in schedules and lists, all of which I make for myself, to keep everything from happening all at once.
When I was about 34 years younger, I took a look at the Communists’ “Five Year Plan.” What with my financial condition being in survival mode at the time, I couldn’t plan very far into the future; 5 years was right out, but I took the 5 year plan and broke it into smaller increments of time. If you start out on Monday morning or Sunday evening, you can make up a 5 day plan for the work week,which will take you through Friday.If you want to do 2 weeks, that’s a 15 day plan, or 1/2 a month. It you want to do a plan for the day, that’s 15 hours.There’s 5 weeks, 5 months or 15 months, a year and a quarter. If planning ahead further than 1 day is a trigger for you, you can break the 5 or 15 hours down into units of 5 or 15 minutes. It’s very versatile. If you can plan ahead further than 15 month, why, go ahead and put your energy into the original 5 year plan. The Commies didn’t copyright their 5 year plan, so I didn’t copyright mine either. Go ahead and break it down however you feel you have to, for your own sanity and convenience.
When I receive the current edits, that starts my 5 day plan. A couple hours spent on the edits, then a couple hours spent on my current WIP, which is And Love Will Steer the Stars. Lunch is in there somewhere, and I might go shopping or to the library.Then I do emails and have supper. My evening is a combination of chatting online and TV viewing. Your mileage may vary, but it works for me. When this year ends and the new year begins,that will start my new 15 month plan and my new 5 month plan. In April, there’s Camp NaNoWriMo, in which I shall attempt the sequel to the book that is coming out shortly, probably sometime next month or the month after. Takuhi’s Dream was published by FireDrake’s Weyr as a Young Adult ebook with certain sections taken out and replaced with 4D chess games, This will be the full adult version with the adult sections restored. It is the story of a young professional woman being pursued across the Human section of the galaxy by two men; one with very evil intentions towards her, and the other--ell, you’ll just have to read it to find out. Will she return to the planet on which 23 members of her 25 person team perished and what will she find there?
