The holidays are a wonderful time for parties, for seeing friends and family, for giving and receiving presents, and for eating and drinking too much!
It is NOT such a good time to get business projects accomplished. It seems all December I have been in a holding pattern!
But there is good news. The manuscript is in the hands of an editor who is reading it to give me a “concept edit.” She will critique the book as a whole with an eye to what parts need to be strengthened and what parts diminished or removed. It will be the first time anyone has read the entire book, so her comments will be an essential step in my polishing the manuscript and getting it ready for publishing.
However, her first impressions were encouraging! She wrote: "My first thought when reading any mss is this: 'Let's get rid of all the boring parts!" .... but there weren't any, so I didn't find myself wanting to skip any pages or sections. It was fun to read all the way through. Very engaging."
I have also spent the last few days immersed in YouTube videos, learning how to work in Microsoft Word rather than Pages, which is my Apple program. Professional agents and publishers expect writers to be familiar with the correct formatting for submissions, and I realize I had a lot to learn. And today, I have gone through the entire 300 pages reformatting paragraph indentations, fonts, spacing, and creating a Table of Contents (that one took me a while to get right!).
I have also been digging out lots of photos and sketches that I want to be included in the finished book.
I have full copyright use of all my costume sketches, and most of my photos, though in some cases I have to seek out the photographers of specific images and see if I can get permission to use them.
There is so much to do besides writing the book! But I am encouraged and motivated as ever. I want the book to be in your hands to enjoy no later than June of this year!
I hope you all are enjoying your holidays and doing lots of the fun stuff.