In the past year, we have released a few excerpts from the book. We decided to share another one—this time one you could listen to. We hope that you enjoy this audio excerpt of “Voyage of Truth”!
Tag: Revisions
It’s Coming Together
Beta Readers…people you pay to be brutally honest about your manuscript. Fortunately this process was not too painful. We have been told that we have a great story and great dialog…and in my opinion that is all you need. However it was suggested that we do a bit of tightening up. You know what that means…DRAFT 18.
Of course we know to sift through the notes and take the good and toss out the bad. We are confident that we will be putting out a strong first book by time it is all said and done. We also know that our book is coming out sooner or later…hopefully sooner.
In other news, we have another draft for our book cover!
DOPENESS! Further confirmation that its happening! We are pleased with our cover illustrator, Sasha Fowler.
Fear of the Unknown
If you think the scariest part of writing a book is starting to write it, you’re wrong. To me, that’s actually the most fun part. Why, because it’s a place where I can escape and not be critized. But now… Now it’s time to recieve reviews from foreign eyes. (Deep Bass) The Editor. When I first submitted the book to our editor, I was losing sleep asking myself so many questions. What if she told me I was a horrible writer? What if she told me that I needed to scrap the entire manuscript (3 years worth of writing) and start over? What if she said there was no hope and I should go back to twirling signs in front of H&R Block? These thoughts continued to haunt me because I hated dressing up as the statue of liberty. Yet, when I received the feedback from her- Christine-, she offered no words of condemnation but gave much praise. But the scary part still wasn’t over.
Just today we sent the manuscript to three beta readers. To date, this is the scariest part because their job is to only critize it. Good or Bad. As I question myself as a writer and my ability to appeal to a mass audience, I realize that the unknown will always be scary. I know I’m good writer but I know I can’t please everbody. It’s like getting an HIV test, knowing you haven’t been with anybody else but the unknown of “What If” is always terrifying. Uncertainty is what causes my nerves to be on edge. Every step that we make with this book moving forward is another step into uncharted territories for us.
Waiting and Postponing
So we are at the point where everything is out of our hands. We are waiting for the final book cover. We are waiting on feedback from our editor. We are waiting for our official website to be completed. We are just waiting.
It feels like the calm before the storm. The to- do list is growing shorter but there are some major items that we have to do such as getting reviewers and planning book tours.
As we wait, we work and plan. But with all this waiting we have decided that instead of releasing the book this month, we will wait until later this summer. It is most important for us to do things in excellence. Even though this is our first book and we know that some mistakes will be made, we feel that the quality of the work we put out must be the same standard that we hold ourselves to. Therefore if we must wait for a quality book cover, subject ourselves to book edits and critiques then we will wait. We are still very much excited to release our book. Can’t wait to share!
Things I Think About As I Write…
As I write, sometimes random thoughts cross my mind. In my effort to be open and share my experience in this process, I decided to share:
- I’m pretty sure my laptop hates me
- I should produce this into a audio book with real actors! How much would the ADR be an hour? Oooook… eBook it is!
- Thank GOD for SchoolHouse Rock for explaining what subject and predicate actually mean
- Thank you but stop please judging me MICROSOFT WORD … I hate your green and red swiggly lines
- Had I known I would be writing a book, I would’ve actually studied those SAT words.
- When do you use really suppose to use a semi-colon?
- Why is the English language so complex?
- Am I using too many adjectives
- I like cake
- If Twilla uses superfluous one more time…
- We should hire an editor to give me constructive feedback.
- How much does an editor cost? How MUCH? Nevermind, sorry Twilla… READ IT AGAIN!!!
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