No, I am not quite done yet, but I do want to get into the habit of posting once a week, even when there is not any big, breaking news. I rather think that will be one of the running themes of this blog, as it centers around the process of trying to get published—the long waits in-between, the lack of news.

I did finish working through that huge stack of papers (see previous photos) and almost all my lingering notes. During the thick of writing this book, I maintained several separate, ongoing Notes Files, each in different formats and with different purposes, which amounted to several hundred pages at any given time. As of this Monday morning, I have one note left to implement. One! The note involves a change that needs to be incorporated in 14 different locations throughout the story; some spots may only need a few words tweaked, others may need a new paragraph inserted, or even a whole page ‘adjusted.’ Not major surgery, but it will take the better part of the day.

After that, I need to visually scan through the whole manuscript looking for large, obvious formatting errors that may have slipped in (usually an extra space inserted between paragraphs or an extra blank page erroneously tacked on at the end of a chapter) or passages highlighted in red that I forgot to un-highlight while editing. 99% of that triple-checking is already done; this will be the final review. Last, I will save duplicates of the text file to every form of digital media known to man, and after that… done!

I have a lot to write about when I am finished. A little about the process over the last 9 1/2 years, some about the state of things now (meaning both of my own ‘professional’ status and of the publishing industry), and a lot about what comes next… but I really ought to get back to work!

(Sorry, no picture this week.)