Book 1 – The lessons learned

The journey to publishing my first book has been amazing. I’ve learned so much from the process, not the least of which is that I am a ‘pantser’ and I must have the patient supervision of an editor. I wrote three books, one right after the other before I engaged an editor. Something that was cathartic at the time and a much needed release valve from everything that was happening in my life when I sat down at the keyboard and began to write.

Which brings me to lesson two, hire an editor, preferably before you have nearly 300k words that need to be reviewed, cut, rewritten, and improved. It can be overwhelming. The work is worth it. The feedback is necessary and showed me how gentle my beta readers were. I love them dearly and I am so very blessed to have people that love the stories reading the rough drafts. But the importance of an editor that will help shape the creative dream into a cohesive whole can’t be understated. If I could do it again, I’d have hired them far sooner in the process.

The final lesson, in my professional life I am organized almost to a fault. In my creative life, I appear to be a fly by the seat of my story kind of writer. I need to balance those two extremes. I need to find a way to integrate my creative self into my daily work. On the flip side, I really need to find a way to get a bit more organized in my writing. Once I sort out how to achieve that, I promise I will share. Until then, much love and light to you all!