Making Mistakes and Fixing Them

The thing I like about self-publishing is that if I find a mistake after I publish a book, I can fix it. Of course it would be swell if I could find them before I publish, but sometimes, the story needs a little overhaul. Yeah, sure it's a pain, I hate re-uploading, because it's more than just that one manuscript that needs to be fixed. Or rather should I say "built".

If you're not a writer, you might think it's just a matter of sitting at the computer and writing a book, doing some magic and "poof", they're for sale on Amazon. But it's not. Once you write the first draft, then it's a matter of revisions and rewrites. So you end  up writing about 10 drafts before you get a decent manuscript. Then it's off to the critique partners for more rewrites and revisions.

The original document, after the problems have been taken care of, usually needs to be what I called "flipped", meaning opening a new document and flipping the corrected version into it. Then I have to make sure all my italics are the same and the green and red squiggly lines are gone. (The less KB   you have on a ms. the better off you are.)

After that, I upload to the mobi.creator to get on Kindle. Then that prc.doc, gets put into Calibre for conversion to epub for the Nook. Once all that's done, then I go back to the original version and doctor that up for Smashwords -they need special wording on the title page. (I know, you must be asking, now that Kindle, and Smashwords now accept epub, you only have to write one document.) Yes, but I would still have to do conversions because of the wording you have to do on Smashword.

Well, I've just fixed all four of my novellas. Several people complained about a particular aspect of my writing, and for the last couple of months I've chosen to ignore it because, well because I've been really busy writing other stuff. But now that Masquerade is done, I decided to take the bull by the horns and go in and fix all the errors.

Four novellas = 16 different manuscripts + covers. Hopefully now, I won't have to do it again. However, I do also have to tackle my novels and that's going to take awhile. It's not just a simple thing of find and replace. I'm sure if I had listened to my instincts in the first place instead of second guessing myself while I wrote the first words of the first book, I wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

But live and learn as they say.

Now they're done and I'm hoping never to have to look at them again. Don't get me wrong, I love my stories, but after reading and rereading them 10,000 times, I just don't want to see them again.

So, I hope you like the "new improved" versions. Maybe with the next book, I'll have made it easier on myself and written it right the first time.

Masquerade Update

Good morning. I just wanted to let you all know that edits on THE LADY'S MASQUERADE are progressing. Unfortunately (for me) they're not easy. But you, dear readers, will have the benefit of all my hard work.

I don't know why I thought this book would be fairly simple to edit. It's been with me for so long I know it back to front. The problem is, because the book started out at 140,000 words, I had to trim it down considerably. I took out all the "fluff" and filler that I thought just dragged at the story. Well, come to find out, my critique partners want me to put it all back in. Things I took out from the beginning just don't make sense at the end. However, it will not be 140,000 words when finished. More like 90,000. Which is good for a story.

So, I'm still working on it, and trying to get it back in shape. I'm up to Chapter 18, so that's heartening. Believe me, that's heartening.

However, all that being said, I'm shooting for an April 15 release date now. It may be sooner if I can really get some good editing time in. My days are broken up in chunks of 4 hours at a time. And those sometimes fall by the wayside if "real life" interrupts. Which, unfortunately, now that it's spring, the lawn mower takes precedence over almost everything.

So hang in there with me. I'll let you know how it's going.

An Update

I'm still on vacation, but I thought I would just take this time to pop in and say, THE LADY'S MASQUERADE is out with my critique partners. For those of you who are waiting, have been waiting, almost given up that it would never be published, take heart. It won't be long now.

I need a couple weeks, my critique partners are thoroughly fabulous, and working with their revisions, shouldn't take too long. I'm hoping to get this book out by the end of March, but just to be on the safe side, I'll say the first week in April.

I'm sure you'll hear from me before then. Thanks for stopping by.