Finished Manuscript: Now What?
Yesterday marked a milestone for my 5th book- I’ve made it available for others to read.
I know what you’re thinking, “Isn’t having others read a book the whole point of writing the book in the first place?”
Yes, yes it is. But as an author (at least for me) making my manuscripts available for anyone else to read is an exercise that’s filled with anxiety, a little bit of nausea, and heaping amounts of self doubt.
As crappy as these feelings are to experience, I think that they’re normal. This book is something that I’ve been working on for MONTHS; it has occupied my thoughts and countless hours of my time. I feel connected to the story and characters so letting someone else into that world is like opening a part of myself up to that person.
My saving grace is that I’m very choosy about who gets to read it immediately after I finish… especially since it’s unedited at this point. My husband gets a copy so that he can look over the “sciency” bits, my marketing consultant gets a copy so that she can see what we’re dealing with and begin planning the release, and of course my editor gets a copy.
The next few weeks are nerve-wracking while I wait and see what they think. Do they like the characters? Does the story flow well? Is it believable? Are the sex scenes hot? (they’d better be!) Will my readers like it? Do they like it?
The list of questions is never-ending but soon I get people’s feedback and- hopefully- my anxiety begins to ebb.
The next stage involves me working for a couple of weeks to fix all of the corrections my editor finds, and configuring the interior so that I can send it to a few members of my immediate family and my beta readers. (email me at [email protected] to become a beta reader and get advanced copies of my books!)
Hopefully by that time my confidence has grown to the point that it can be released. If not… I’d better suck it up because it’s still going to be released 🙂
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