It’s Read Around the Rainbow time!!! If you haven’t seen one of these posts before, we’re a group of authors who get together on the last Friday of the month to write a blog post on the same topic. Below you’ll find links to the others, so you can jump around and compare/see what we have to say 😊
This month, we’re talking about what happens After The End.
I wish I knew 😆 Or not.
But we’re talking after the end of the story, not anything else. I don’t really know where I’m gonna put my End, to be honest. I mean, I write in Scrivener, and when I reach The End, I start over. I read the story from start to finish. And I should probably mention that I’m dyslexic, so me having written it from start to finish (because that’s how I write, no jumping around or moving scenes or anything like that) doesn’t mean the sentences make sense to anyone but me 😅 There will be missed words, messed up letters, dropped endings of words, and I won’t see them.
Next step is that I have a long list of words I search for and decide if I’m gonna keep or not – you know the That, Said, Feel, Just, Really and so on. I’m much more lenient these days than I used to be. A few years ago, you wouldn’t find a Feel or Really in my stories. Now I keep the ones I like and delete the rest.
Once that’s done, I do a grammar check. And since comma splice is a thing, I use Grammarlookup.com rather than Grammarly (and now we have the whole A.I. with Grammarly thing too, though I haven’t looked into how clean Grammarlookup is… probably not so much) since Grammarly’s comma splices are a premium feature LOL
Then, I move everything to Word. In Word, I listen to the story. This is where I’m yet again reminded I’m dyslexic because even though I’ve read the story once and done a grammar check, there are A LOT of missing words, misspelt words, words in the wrong tense since –ed is an ending I often drop etc.
Are you tired yet? Because at this stage, I usually want to throw up. Writing is fun, guys! Fixing errors and typos, not so much.
When I’ve reached the end yet again, I contact my lovely beta readers and ask them if they can have a look at it.
Once they’ve read it and sent back their notes, I sit down and go through them. I listen to my beta readers. If there is something they don’t understand, I clarify. If there is a sentence that doesn’t make sense to them, I change it.
I don’t have much ego when it comes to my writing. I always assume others know better (dyslexic and second language speaker) so if they comment on something, I change it. That being said, my beta notes are often easy to go through.
Guess what I do then??
I listen to it again! 😬 Do you know how long it takes to listen to a 50k story? I need to stop writing 50k stories if I want to stay sane (Ha! That ship has sailed.)
Then it’s time to submit, yay! Only… wait. Blurb and cover suggestions and shit.
If you think reading/listening to a 50k story over and over again is hard, try to write a 200-word blurb, and then one that’s 400 characters, and then a tagline for social media on 200 characters.
AND then, you need to provide 7 keywords that fit and also make sense to readers and might be things the readers that might like your book might search for. Good luck!
At this stage, I feel like crying.
Then we have the stock photo death which is when you spend hours scrolling through sweaty cover models. You need to pick a model who hasn’t been on too many covers already, you have to find one who doesn’t look insane, who isn’t standing in some weird pose, and who looks at least somewhat of how you’ve pictured your main character, and who you think your readers might like, and so on.
Wine. Wine and chocolate are needed here.
Then finally!!! You get to send the story in to your publisher (if you have one. I do, so I send my story in.)
Now everything is laughs and giggles… until you get an email.
I want to let you all know that I love my editor. Her name is Loukie Adlem, and she is awesome! If you wonder how I feel about edits, my answer is the same as with my beta readers. I have no doubt Loukie knows better than me, and if she changes something, I’m not gonna bitch about it.
At this stage, it’s all about making the reading the best possible experience for the reader. I’ve written it. I’ve told the story I wanted to tell. If a moved comma, a synonym, a changed sentence or whatever will make it easier for YOU to comprehend, to make it run more smoothly or whatever it might be, I’m not gonna argue.
I want people to read my story, and I trust Loukie to want what’s best for it. I know some authors will claim their stories are art (they are, but they’re also products) and are unwilling to change things, who fret about a comma, who wants the sentence exactly as they first wrote it. That’s not me. If my editor suggests a speech tag or an epithet, I will refuse, but those are pretty much my only limits LOL.
So I accept if not all, then close to all changes, and guess what I do once that’s done…
Yup, I listen to it. Again.
If I’m really lucky and Loukie thinks it’s needed, I will then listen to it one more time. BUT by then I’m also crying and considering if maybe writing isn’t what I’m supposed to do.
Then, sometime after, you’ll stumble upon a post somewhere where some idiot – yes, I’m gonna call them that – thinks books are too expensive and downloads them from a pirate site instead.
I don’t think they realise how many hours people (NOT just the author) have invested in every single book. It’s all the hours I’ve spent on it. Then we have the beta readers who invest hours of their time to help get the book out there. Then we have the editor who spends hours doing edits and proofreading. Then we have the people doing the formatting, the uploading to retailers, the cover artists etc.
It’s a miracle anyone creates books.
But we love it, for the most part, right? 😁
Today, we have Frances Fox here to share an excerpt from her most recent release, Sounds Complicated, so read on!
Frances Fox writes contemporary MM romance. The Rockstar series is a new eight-book series of novellas following the musicians, stage-crew and friends of Heggarty’s Bow. If you like to read spicy MM stories about vulnerable guys looking for love, she’ll have you covered.
Contemporary Gay Fiction
Ofelia Grand 