So, you know my BIG news from this week, that WIP is finally a fully formed first draft!

What is a writer supposed to do once it is all done?

I’ve had many tell me to put it to bed for a little while, before reading it again.

Then, get it out, read it, and start the LOOOOOONG process of editing, and redrafting, getting it beta-read, redrafting, editing, re-reading, more editing… you get the picture…

If it took me 18 years to write the first thing, I may be finally ready to publish in, oh, about 2050! Then it could be classed as historical fiction too!

And all this before thinking of covers and actual publication, and suchlike!

I’m at a loss… Do I think to send it off to traditional publishers or do I go Indie, like I did with my poetry book, Poetic RITUals?

Pah, I’ll think about that after getting some opinions on the manuscript, I think.

Still, the idea of putting it to bed straight away was hard for me.

I wanted a paper copy.

I know many of you said you edit on screen, the paper edit is too tiresome and very paper-heavy… But the feel of that first tome… it just had to be done.

My home printer wouldn’t have coped.  I contacted someone local who does printing, and arranged to pop in on Friday morning to get it all ready for me so I could have my copy to scribble on, and generally cherish.

I had it saved on my cloud, my machine, my hard drive and a USB stick, ready for print-off…

But I couldn’t let it lie, could I?

Oh no!

I thought I’d do a quick (Quick? Who was I kidding, there were 300 pages to go through!) spell-check and edit via the Word editor and Grammarly. I did start off with ProWritingAid, which promises so much, but it kept crashing the programme… Sorry, I am not risking losing all those words!

All was going well, then I realised there were a couple of schoolkid errors, like consistency with how I’d written certain words. And Word has a great Find and Replace tool to change them all…

So I used it with a couple of words – all good!

Then I wanted to change Er to Err… as it appeared to show in one of the editors as the best way to write that procrastination “Err” in speech.

So I did it, and instead of changing what I wanted, it changed EVERY word with the letters er in, to having Err in it instead!

mothErr, fathErr, sistErr, watErr… you get my drift?

And it wouldn’t undo!

I was up until midnight trying to correct as many as I could… after all I had a 9.30am appointment with a printer!

Woke up and was determined to get the niggles ironed out before going.

I even found a great discount on the Grammarly Premium… 50% off!

So excited was I that I went through the whole thing!

And it took me to 12 noon!

Dang!

Well, I got the kids ready (remember, I have little-ish people to look out for too) and we raced into town.

The girl at the shop was expecting me. Her colleague was the one I had spoken to, and she was prepared for the mammoth print and bind job that was due in.

She read my mini blurb as it printed, and mentioned that it was intriguing… I liked that! (I left her with my blogger business card!)

Then we left the precious manuscript with her to be bound, whilst I fed the kids and got my nails done – my treat for myself.

And here it is…

I’ll put it to bed now, honestly… for a little while at least, but I’ve tucked it away with some special bedmates, ready for editing…