So, it’s been a couple of months since my book deal was announced, and invariably I get the same question from friends and family when I tell them my book will be coming out in winter 2021:

Why is it so far away???

Um, do you know how much goes into publishing a book? If you haven’t been through it, probably not. I’m learning as I go along, so I will share my experience, which won’t be the same as everyone’s.

What I can tell you are the steps so far.

First, there was a ton of celebrating because I HAD A BOOK DEAL!! There are times when this still doesn’t feel like a real thing. After querying agents for so many years, then signing quickly with Elizabeth and then Bloomsbury for this book, it was quite a crazy ride. However, I will never forget–and I don’t want anyone else to either–that there were seven years of learning and building up my skills that happened before that whirlwind. Sure, there are writers who get there with their first book, but it’s not the norm. Sorry if that seems like a downer, but even though I’m an optimist, I’m also a realist. Thus the feeling of unreality.

Next, there was the waiting for the announcement. Oh, did you think the deal got announced the day we agreed to it? Nope, that’s not how these things work. You have to keep it SECRET until things are all tied up and ready to be announced publicly. Let me tell you, it’s really hard not to hire a skywriter to fly around with a huge sign saying “I HAVE A BOOK DEAL.” But then, once the announcement is out, there’s a whole other round of celebrating with all of the writing friends you’ve made along the journey, and that’s a ton of fun.

Then, it’s time to get to work. Woohoo! I mean, you didn’t think revisions were over once a publisher buys your book? Personally, I love revising, and I’d talked to my editor before we signed about what she had in mind for the book, so I had an idea what to expect. There was just one teensy little glitch. My editorial letter arrived the same day as these:

Yep, I’m the cookie mom for my daughter’s Girl Scout troop. Now, lest you think my editor is a horrible task master, I never told her this was happening at the same time–or that my daughter’s talent show also got rescheduled during this same window and I was running rehearsals for her act. Or planning friend and family birthday parties for my son. Um, yeah, February and March were absolutely CRAZY. And the weather didn’t help, as things kept getting canceled and rescheduled, including the cookie season getting extended an extra week so that I ended up having to finalize cookie sales the same day I turned in my edits. I was leaving for vacation the next day, and I was about to lose my mind. But, the thing is … I like deadlines. And I REALLY wanted to turn in my first-round revisions before I left for vacation. Because when I did leave on vacation and had nothing left hanging over me, it was AMAZING. It felt like a huge reward for everything I’d finished. I’m so glad I didn’t ask for an extension (which my editor totally would have given me because she’s awesome).

But anyway, back to the edits themselves. I’m sure you’re wondering what it’s like to revise with an editor. It’s fantastic but challenging–as it should be. When you get to this point, your book is going out into the world. It’d better be ready for that. My editor asked in-depth questions and told me this was just the beginning of what we’d be working on, so I know there will be more work to do. I read through her notes, and then we talked on the phone before I started revising. How did I tackle my revisions with all those other distractions going on?

First of all, I kept my online activities to a minimum during the five weeks I was revising. If you were here on my blog you saw reviews every week, but that was misleading, as I scheduled all of those before my edits and the cookies arrived on Feb. 13. I even took photos and drafted captions for Instagram posts in advance so I could just post them on the days the reviews went live. I was on Twitter some the first couple of weeks, but after that it was mainly just to lead people back to my reviews on the blog or give updates on my revision progress as I didn’t want to disappear completely. I actually turned my phone upside down so I wouldn’t see notifications.

Next, in case you’re new here or just need a reminder, I do EVERYTHING in Scrivener, so I imported the document from my editor into my Scrivener file. It included all of the questions from my editor, the notes I’d made in response, plus the notes from our phone conversation. Then, I made a revision checklist. This checklist was a compilation of both little items I could check off quickly and major things I needed to fix–like rewrite the ending :). What works best for me is to start with the biggest items first and work down to the smaller items for a couple of reasons. One: they will take the most time and then they are out of the way. Two: I will have the most distance from those items when I get to the bottom of the list and am reading back through everything to see if I nailed them or they still need more work.

So, as you perhaps guessed from what I stated above, I did not revise linearly, by reading straight through the manuscript and tackling items as they popped up. Instead, I addressed each big-picture item individually, which Scrivener makes so much easier to do than, say, Word. I’ve blogged about this before, but the way that I did this was by using the Collections feature. I had already created collections for various subplots in the book (the love interest, the best friend, the antagonist, etc.), so it was easy to click into those collections and revise just those sections. Sometimes notes on these areas overlapped and so when I went into another subplot I’d already tackled something, and that was just a bonus :). This worked really well because by the time I got to the read-through, I had some distance from those big-picture items and could ensure the continuity was working.

Another feature I made use of during revisions was the split-screen option, for several purposes. I could pull up my notes from my editor while working on a scene to compare what I was doing to what we’d discussed. Or sometimes I would pull up two different scenes to compare how I was foreshadowing a particular incident or if I wanted to move something how it impacted the other scene. Or just keep my checklist open while I was working through scenes. Super helpful!

Does this mean my book is ready to go? Ha ha ha! There’s the answer to that question: Why is it so far away???

Because next I will have another round of edits. If you were reading closely, you saw that my editor said this was just the first round of changes she wanted to address. As I was working on the edits, I could totally see that there were areas we weren’t touching yet, and maybe that was because they were fine, but maybe that was because they were for the next level of edits. Plus, once you make a round of changes, you always open yourself up to potential new issues. It’s the nature of the beast.

But I’m excited because I know this book is getting better and better. I’ll continue to update here as I go through the publishing process. I’m not sure if I will approach revisions any differently the next time around, but if I do, I’ll be sure to share. At least I shouldn’t have cookies to deal with. But you know what? There will probably be something else, and that’s okay because I actually thrive on that sort of pressure. Bring it on! The payoff is worth it.