Despite going through his last few weeks of his Masters program, Austin’s been awesome at doing this editing project. I imagine that when all is said and done, he’s probably going to hate me a little bit. I don’t think he realized how much work this would be when I asked him to do it. In fairness, I am paying him, so there’s that.
I did the addition on word count of what we’ve edited so far, and we’re roughly a third done with the first draft’s edit. Making good progress, but I think it’s definitely taking longer than either of us expected it to.
Remind me to never think writing a book is easy ever again. The initial draft was an easier process and took less time than editing it. It’s kind of surprising, when you think about it.
On the upside — once the first draft is edited, all of the spelling and grammatical mistakes should be caught, and I can focus on the content of what it all says in the second draft.
My plan is still to hire a professional story editor once the second draft is done, to make sure that the story works. I may also solicit some friends to read it and just let me know what they think of it. I’m still not positive that the story itself is even any good. Hopefully it is. I’ll be able to solicit Austin’s opinion on the story once he’s done reading everything.
The process has been slow, but rewarding. Having someone else make comments on the work, chapter by chapter, has been great. Though there have been chapters that have comments that make me discouraged, overall the editing process is going quite well.
My goal is to be done with the first draft’s edit by the end of May, and then work on the second draft through June. I’m shooting to have everything done and self-published by the end of September. That includes recording the audio book, which I obviously can’t do until the story is done and completely edited.
That’d make the total turnaround time for this whole project about seven(ish) months, as I started in early March. If I sell 1000 copies, I’ll be happy. That’s my goal. For something I just decided to do, have no backing on, and am financing myself, I think that’s a completely realistic goal. Anything more than that will be cake.
Plus, at 1000 copies, I’ll have made my money back on what I’m spending out of pocket to have the book edited, published, the audio book recorded, and the various other costs associated with this whole thing.
Fingers crossed!
