Exciting news, guys! I got notes on Dress Rehearsal Rag from the first of my beta readers the other day. And let me tell you, they rock! So helpful. I’m going to start working through them later today, and hopefully notes from the others should come in later in the week. I always feel like a headless chicken when it comes to juggling multiple notes, because I don’t know whether to do them one beta at the time, or one chapter at the time with everyone’s notes, or what. It’s always a bit confusing: what if I change things and then get to the next person’s notes and that gives me an even better idea of how to change it? I like having a plan but it’s hard to have a proper plan since you don’t know what the feedback will contain. But I think it’ll be okay in the end! This past week I have:
- Done my daily writing, all days except one
- Worked with my own notes for Dress Rehearsal Rag, implementing smaller changes and highlighting parts that need bigger changes so that I can look at my beta readers’ notes for those parts before I start changing them.
- Found a cover artist, yay!
- Found a proofreader, double yay!
- Skimmed and bookmarked a bunch of articles on formatting for Createspace, the print-on-demand service I’ll be using. I feel pretty on top of it now, but I’ve also decided to put it on ice until I’ve finished editing Dress Rehearsal Rag. Once that’s with the proofreader, maybe I’ll give the formatting a go, but until then I need to focus on this release.
- Posted some exciting news from my writing tribe!
The only bummer from last week was that there were some practical obstacles to taking my cover shot when I had planned to, so that’s been postponed to this week instead. Fingers crossed for good weather on Wednesday! Other than that, I will:
- Do my daily writing
- Keep editing Dress Rehearsal Rag. I don’t have a particular goal, I just want to get as much done as I possibly can. I need to get it to my proofreader in about 2 weeks so no time to waste!
- Get my cover photo, and send it to my cover artist.
- Start writing the blurb for Dress Rehearsal Rag. This is hands down my least favorite part of book production.
- Send my May newsletter, on Monday. If you haven’t signed up for it yet, do it through the form in my right-hand menu!
- Post an excerpt from Dress Rehearsal Rag right here on the blog, on Friday. So keep your eyes open!
This is going to be a busy week, but hopefully also very productive. I’m starting to get the “almost publishing time”-jitters. Can’t believe how fast time has moved this spring! Hopefully this week won’t fly by too fast!