Books We Love Insider Blog: #CanadianAdventure

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

I Wrote a Book - The End / by Barbara Baker

Whoa. Not so fast.

It feels fabulous to write The End but there’s more work to do. So much more work. First, I read the novel from start to finish. When I feel the plot is solid, the dialogue is smooth and shit happens in every chapter, I send the document to an editor and a few writing buddies who have great critique skills. Then I close the file and wait.

Almost the longest wait ever.

Responses trickle in. I sift through suggestions, rejig sections I agree with, swear at not having caught my own errors and then, because I fiddle fart around with the text, I recheck the story threads to make sure the sequence of events still work.

Once that’s done, I check for excess use of ‘ly’ endings in adverbs and adjectives and move on to search for those bad words. You know the ones: was, felt, very, had, thought, saw, very suddenly (never use), that, only, and for some reason (also, never use). I've collected these words from speakers at writing conferences so don’t blame me for the list.

Next, a quick review of exclamation marks. Did you know some agents will search the manuscript for them and if there are too many, they won’t read a single word? Again, not my experience. I learned that tidbit from a panel of agents who were discussing their editing process. And personally, I probably used up my quota of exclamation marks by grade 10.

Then it’s on to spell, grammar and punctuation check with the Word edit tool. Yup, tedious but necessary. It still surprises me how my favourite words aren’t in their dictionary yet.

Nearly done.

One. More. Final. Read. I am a firm believer of reading aloud to find errors my eyes skim over when I read to myself. I like to do it in two consecutive days, so everything is fresh, but I procrastinate. By the end of day one my house is spotless, and I’ve done 10,000 steps. Not a single page turned.

Day two, I plunk down in my office chair. My screen is dust free. The light is perfect. I change Word’s Read Aloud program voice to a male, speed it up a notch and increase the screen viewing size.

As the unsexy voice tells my story, I follow on the screen to spot errors. Thirty-seven pages in, I find a typo. How’d I miss that? How’d my readers miss it?

Two days later, a huge sigh of relief. The End. Again.

And off my baby goes to the publisher.

Fingers, toes and eyes crossed, I walk, I bike, I invite grandchildren over to play. Days take longer than 24 hours and I’m grumpy.

Longest wait ever – but only for me.

The publisher’s edit returns. I open the document and check the comments. One, two, three pages in without edits, a few notes, more pages without…I breathe when I get to The End for the last time.

When the manuscript returns and the book cover pops into my email, my heart melts.

It’s perfect.

What About Me? Release date September 1, 2022.