Writing a story is exciting and gratifying. Last week I finished writing the rough draft of my new book, Mystery at Badger Lake. In this latest story, the characters experience many emotions, from love, anger, happiness, and sadness. These emotions are what bring the story alive.
The real work begins now, the time-consuming and roller coaster ride of editing. It’s more than editing the manuscript for grammar mistakes. The work involves reviewing each chapter and seeing if you can improve a sentence, a paragraph, or add a new chapter. Making numerous changes is what happened in my last book Fate of the Three, a Yukon Survival Adventure.
The mistake I made with Fate of the Three, though, was to give the final draft to my editor only to learn there were still more changes to be made. Making these additional changes took two months after I initially gave the editor. It was quite embarrassing, but I did learn not to rush things and take as much time as needed to hand my editor the final draft.
I haven’t set a date to publish my book, but it will probably this summer.