Writing your first novel is, in many ways, a grueling experience. Some of it, I wasn’t entirely prepared for. A lot of it, I definitely didn’t see coming. Through the process, I learned I was well suited and trained for much of it, and not really ready at all for some of it.
I started writing on the morning of Dec. 19, and it took me right at six weeks to write about 85,000 words. From there, it took me six months to edit it and get it to where I felt like it didn’t suck, and could go out into the world. Sometimes, I got frustrated. Other times, I was excited. Almost all the time, I wanted it to be over, and be where I am today, with a brand new novel sitting on Amazon’s virtual shelves and several positive reviews alongside it.
Here are five key lessons I’ve learned from going through this process. If you ever think about writing a book of your own, hopefully you can learn from the stupid things I did, and do fewer stupid things yourself.
Editing is the hard part
I think I sort of knew this, deep down, but I definitely didn’t fully appreciate it as I was writing, and when I was done with the rough draft. When I finished the draft at the end of January, I thought there was a possibility I’d have this puppy out by April or May. I went ahead and signed up to speak and sign at the Decatur Book Festival in September, fully confident I’d be out well before that. But, as the editing process moved along, it became pretty clear that this was going to test my patience quite a bit. Make sure to leave plenty of time for taking your book from that crappy first draft (they’re all crappy first drafts) to a real novel.
Don’t sleep on the formatting
I had a hunch formatting might be tough, but this was one of the lessons I buried it a bit. I figured, “How hard could it be?” While it’s not hard, per se, it isn’t easy to know what you have before seeing a printed proof. It’s no problem with the Kindle, particularly if you have one. You can look at that yourself. But the paperback book is hard to know for sure. Createspace gives you a digital version, but it’s not quite the same. That’s especially true when you have no frame of reference for it. As a result, for me, the first set of paperbacks have font and margin issues. Not massive ones, but still. Be sure you have the formatting right, or pay someone to do so.
Know your timing
My original plan had been to go Amazon exclusive, and then start off my book at 99 cents through Kindle’s promotions. But what I didn’t know, and somehow hadn’t read, was you have to be enrolled in Kindle Direct Publishing for 30 days before your promotion can kick in. So, I had told everyone to expect 99 cents, but then I was at $4.99, making this one of the more public lessons I had to learn. Then, I decided that was higher than I wanted to be, and I quickly switched it to $2.99. That’s where I’m sitting now, but it wasn’t exactly smooth. I could have done a bit more research and avoided that. I’ll know next time, though. Now, so will you. You’re welcome.
Don’t rely on your editor (too much)
No editor is perfect. Neither are you, of course. Actually, I don’t know that. Maybe you are. Who am I to judge? But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re not. And, if so, you’re going to need an editor to rein in whatever suckiness you have. But remember, that editor’s going to have blind spots. She’s going to miss mistakes. She’s going to make errors of her own. And it’s not that I didn’t know that. I think it’s just that I hadn’t done this before, and I may have leaned on her a bit. So that may have taken away from some of my focus with editing myself. Editing yourself is hard enough without your 100% full, complete attention. Rely on yourself. Let your editor catch what you don’t. Assume she’ll catch nothing. You’ll do better if you do.
Tax stuff isn’t fun, but get it done (Hey, that rhymed)
I kept putting off meeting with an accountant, so we could figure out a few things. Between getting married and starting this whole side business thing, I was in pretty serious need of someone who knew what they were doing. But life got in the way, as it tends to do, and I apparently had to learn these lessons the hard way. And we didn’t meet with an accountant until just a few weeks ago. That put everything — from starting an LLC to opening up bank/credit accounts — up in the air right when I needed it not to. Yeah, you just want to write. You don’t want to deal with all this other crap. But just do it. Do it now. If you don’t, you’ll wonder why you didn’t.
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