It's been one month since I last wrote about how my novel is coming along. The process of creating a book seems both painfully slow and incredibly fast-paced. I am often torn between looking at my calendar, knowing that the majority of edits will be completed by October (which seems a million years away) and the day-to-day work that feels as if it is piling up.
Currently, Maria (my editor) and I are on the final round of the developmental editing process. With this part of editing, Maria has gone in to my story and taken a large-picture view of the characters, setting, plot, and pacing and given me her recommendations on how I might improve any of those given areas. This part of the editing process was probably the one I dreaded the most. After having held my story for so long, it felt vulnerable to hand it over for another's eyes with the sole purpose of telling me everything that wasn't working.
Maria made the process so easy, though! She gave really incredible, constructive feedback and took incredible time and care with my novel, as if it were her own. Every single suggestion she made was golden and we wound up incorporating many of her ideas. The ones we didn't incorporate were namely because the sections she had suggested ideas for were sections where my intention was not coming across clearly. In those instances, Maria helped to make my words shine so that my original intent was no longer lost.
So, where does that leave me and A Daisy in Lily's Valley now?
As of today, I am incorporating the last few minor edits into the manuscript as well as writing my Author's Note, Acknowledgements, and Recipes that I had always planned to accompany Emiliana's story, being that her entire world revolves around her gluten-free baking. After that, I will pass my manuscript back to Maria where she will start the 6-week long process of copy/ line editing. This is where she will be looking at the story on a line-by-line basis to ensure that the sentence structure is varied enough, my point is coming across clearly, and that my grammar/ spelling is accurate.
While she is off doing that, I will begin to format the actual novel for both print and as an e-book. I should also be hearing back from my cover/ interior illustrator (yay!) and will need to complete a few random tasks. These include: assigning an ISBN to each of my books, choosing a pen name, getting my book up on Goodreads + StoryGraph, and developing a *better* marketing plan, as I am currently winging it.
There is still so much to be done before the book is back in my hands, and even more to do once the copy/ line editing phase is complete. It feels overwhelming at times having all of these moving pieces flying about. But at the same time, it is so exciting to be able to chart this new path forward. And once I have done it all once, I will be better prepared for the next book 💛
What sorts of things would you like me to talk more about in my next book update entry? Feel free to leave me a comment below!