After getting my developmental edit back from my editor, the real work began. For three weeks straight, I worked almost 12 hours per day on my book. I am exhausted. Now that it’s sent off for proofreading, I can finally take a day off. Although, when you identify as a creative, do you ever truly have a day off? No.

However, I’m now one step closer to my book being out in the real world. I still can’t believe it. I’ll admit, I’m stressed (but well dressed) thinking about… I don’t even want to type it out… my book… flopping. It’s tough out there in the publishing world. The stats for first-time authors succeeding are dreadful. But if there’s one thing I am, it’s determined.

I see a specific life for myself and I won’t stop until I get it. And that means, writing books and making a fierce living off of it.

Self-Publishing Diary: The Three-Week Edit & Rewrite

Once I’d reviewed all of my editor’s changes, it was time to either accept them or decline to make the change. However, almost all of her edits made perfect sense to me. After all, she has more experience with this than I do! There were only a handful (probably less) of changes that I decided not to make after going through the advice.

READ MORE: What I Learned After Receiving 60+ Rejections from Book Agents

As I’ve mentioned before, I started writing The Manhattan Mishap over three years ago. Obviously there were going to be some messy parts! After all of that time, I’ve grown as a writer and my skills have most definitely evolved. (I’d be worried if they hand’t.) Some parts of the manuscript were tougher to untangle than others, but I’m loving what I ended up with.

I added in new scenes, changed some names, fixed words that I had repeated fifty thousand times. When I’m powering through a manuscript, I don’t realize how often I’m saying certain things. Thank god for Thesaurus. (Lol.) It’s astounding how many times I typed “honestly” and “trust me” and “exactly”. For most, I flat out deleted the word and the sentence wasn’t affected at all.

I deleted over 47,000 words from my original manuscript and rewrote even more. The word count I ended up submitting? 85,392. My brain is fried. Next up will be the interior layout of the book. And then… publication!

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