Hello! 

Welcome to the ‘Behind the Scenes’ of my book writing and publishing journey. Today I’m going to talk a little about the final draft read… cry, cry, cry. 

It’s not going the way I’d hoped. 

First of all, this is the 4th trip through this with Bri and easily the 8th draft overall. I wrote the book for NaNoWriMo in 2014. The Dream Keepers is a very well-loved story. When I decided to publish it, I printed out my last copy of the manuscript and rewrote a whole new draft into the Scrivener application. I then would export the files and import them to Google Docs and compile them for Bri. Bri and my friend Raylene read my ‘beta’ file. I took all their comments and notes and made them on a physical draft. I then posted them to Bri’s manuscript and the Scrivener one.

Why was I making extra work for myself? I don’t know yet. We will see how Scrivener works out to determine if it is worth it or not, okay!?

So, Bri and I went through the copy twice more, and then we recompiled it for this final proof. Which I again made a physical copy. 

I stress writers to do two things: 

1. Read your book out loud or have someone read it to you if you have the luxury.
2. Create a physical copy you can read to see what it looks like and make notes on that copy. I can’t tell you how different a physical copy looks compared to a digital one.

So, why am I crying? 

Because we might as well be looking at this from the beta version for all the things I see format-wise and content-wise that are wrong. It’s heartbreaking and deadline threatening since we need the final copy no later than the 16th, which probably means one more read-through, making it late.

Why, oh, why?

I guess this is just because Bri and I are being very thorough. We don’t want to publish rubbish. I want to put the best I can out there for people to read. I don’t want anyone to read and review my book and leave a comment saying, ‘this wasn’t worth the money because the grammar and punctuation were a mess.’ I worked very hard on The Dream Keepers and I want it to reflect that.

So, this time it is me reading my book like it’s the first time I’m looking at it, after reading it at least twenty times before. I have notes to droplines to a new paragraph. Notes to explain terminology that seems unusual. Notes to move apostrophes and correct tenses. And

notes to ask Bri why I am using tenses in some places that seem antithetical. 

None of this includes Bri’s comments! 

Wah, wah, wah. 

All I want to do at this point is burn it and start over.

That said, I’m looking for ARC readers and bloggers, and bookstagrammers interested in signing up for my book tours. I will have a 100% readable product ready for release. 😁 

Here is the sign-up for the book tour with Enticing Journey. https://forms.gle/Lwidgprz8fEwzTqH8