Hello Again!
Today’s post will cover what happened to my manuscript as it made it’s way to being printed.
If you have been reading my earlier posts, you know by now that I will start out with a recent photo or two of Duke first. He continues to delight us all.
Before Duke.
After Duke.
On to today’s subject – my manuscript process.
Once the completed manuscript was done, I sent it into the publisher. I kept the manuscript, or (ms) very true to the journal entries and tried to fill in the gaps where I hadn’t written in a couple of weeks, or months with a smooth, readable story line. The following photo is what my ms looked like when I sent it in to the pubisher.
Please check out my sub title. I really liked “A Journey Through Hell on Earth, The Desert of Recovery, and The Healing of a Women’s Heart.” My editor thought it was too long and “wordy.” Oh well.
It was decided that a new editor and writer would be hired to make the story line flow easier, and perhaps try to make it more appealing to a wider range of people. After months of re-writing and many, many emails back and forth, I received the new up-dated ms. They had changed the title to “Beached”, and the sub – title was, “How my husband’s sexual addiction capsized my life.” There was a pretty photo of a beach house on the top of the cover, and a swamped row boat on the bottom. When I first saw the title, I gasped. All I could think of was a beached whale! Also, the sub-title was just plain…….! I didn’t say anything at first.
The ms itself looked nothing like I imagined. The writer changed the entire feel of my book. He is a talented writer for sure, but totally missed the mark. After many months of e-mailing back and forth, with my deletions and changes that needed to be made, I heard back from the publisher that the ms was now in the hands of another writer. Here is “Beached.”
Thankfully, my relationship with this editor/writer was a very different experience. She had a lot on her plate because there were so many notes, deletions and re-writes done that she had to get caught up with. After many months, she got the ms back on track. She totally agreed with me about the title and we changed that back as well.
The ms was sent back in to the publisher. It was then put into the hands of my third, and final editor, who turned out to be fabulous. I told her that I still wanted to go over some things that were still not quite right, or, were not “my voice”. She told me to take all the time I needed to get the book the way I wanted it. So, I spent many more months re-writing, editing, and adding back in alot of the entries that had been cut by the first editor.
My editor and I had a good relationship – we spoke a lot on the phone so we would have no misunderstandings. She did change the sub title, but I was ok with that. Once I was finally content with the ms, I sent it back to my editor for good. 
This whole editing and re-writing process took 4 years. My book will be released 4 1/2 years after I signed my contract. It has been a very frustrating, exciting, maddening, rewarding journey.
I was told by a well-known author who I have had the privilege to be in contact with, “to save every draft.” So, I did. I have almost 3 whole storage boxes full of notes, drafts, and emails detailing my writing experience.
That’s all for now. I hope to blog more often, but I am having difficulty with uploading images and spacing. Wish I could take some classes on blogging.
Have a nice week.