Burning the Candle at Both Ends

The untold story of becoming a published author

Hello! Welcome to Rosy’s Ramblings if you’re new here. This is the bit where I welcome all the hundreds (clears throat) of new subscribers, and thank my loyal followers. Except there aren’t any. (Sigh). I seem to have plateaued. At just under 200 subscribers, 7 of which are paying. Yay! Thank you, kind people. So, if you would like to inflate my meagre numbers, please feel free to hop aboard the Rosy’s Ramblings bus and make my day.

Every week, I read about how people have grown their Substack exponentially from silly numbers to even sillier numbers. Numbers that I will never be able to achieve. But I’m okay with that. As long as my core followers (yes, that’s you!) enjoy what I write, that’s good enough for me. Thank you for being here.

Back to my journey to get my book published via the traditional route. Boy, what a journey it’s been! The submission process itself was a marathon. Then, after the 13th (I know, unlucky for some) e-mail being pinged off, the 14th (ah, not the unlucky one then!) the reply was a resounding, ‘Yes, we would love to publish your book.’ Well, it wasn’t that quick or that straightforward. First of all, there was the request for a full. (The whole manuscript as opposed to the first 10,000 words and synopsis that I had initially submitted).

Then there was a three week wait to hear back. Boom! I was going to be a published author. Yay! Happy dance around my office, down the stairs, into the lounge…well, all over the house, actually. You get my drift. Then there was the Contract. Reading 32 pages of legal jargon (yes, I work with legal jargon every single day, and it still wasn’t any clearer to me). Then, on the advice of an author friend (whose insights have been invaluable as she is much further along on her journey than I am), I became a member of the Society of Authors. It’s about £120 per year and, IMHO, sorry, hate those acronyms, in my humble opinion, worth every penny. Anyway, they vetted my Contract free of charge. Incredible. So, that process took a couple of weeks. They were very efficient and I was most impressed. Thank you, SoA. Really. You do a great job for us authors.

Once I had signed on the dotted line, the work began. I have written previously about the developmental editing, structural editing (or, structural headache as it’s known in the trade), and all the other stages that make up the production of a book, before it even gets to the printers. The cover design, cover reveal. It goes on and on.

Publication date has been delayed several times. My publisher explained that the editing process knocks everything back. A bit like a queue of books waiting to go to the printers and because mine needed more work doing on it, (apparently, I had deviated from the main plot-line far too much and had to pull it all back together), I basically pushed everybody else’s back in the queue. I think that was the gist of it. Anyway, for the first time in the whole process, I got frustrated. And, if I’m honest, a little bit upset.

My happy bubble was turning into a not-so-happy bubble. Not good. I tried to explain to my publisher that every time my friends ask me, ‘So when can I buy your book? ’ and I say March, then I say May, then I tell them June. Now it’s July and it looks as though the end of August has been set for publication date. I feel like the boy who cried wolf. Eventually, they will stop believing that I have written a book. And I still don’t have a precise date. So, all I can do, is try to keep the momentum going of all the interest I have tried to drum up to help advanced sales. And yes, I really have written a book.

As Hemmingway said:

‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’

Jeez. Never a truer word. I have poured my heart and soul into this book. I have also spent countless hours sitting at my laptop when I should have been outside in the fresh air or doing other things. But it all takes time. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at how much time in the number of actual hours that I have spent on it.

Which brings me to another stage in the publication process. ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies). The publisher sends out the book in digital format to people for a sneak preview in return for a review. I spent most of my weekend chasing up friends and acquaintances who had kindly agreed to be my ARCs.

I tried to relax over the weekend. Having worked in an extremely busy legal environment for the entire week, I also have to catch up on admin stuff, marketing, creating banners and signatures for my e-mail (do you like the fancy banner at the top of the page - cool, 😎 eh?!) As well as read and reply to e-mails, and still try to maintain my enthusiasm for my book. Sometimes, it’s tough.

As if all of that isn’t enough to make me exhausted, and I bet you feel exhausted just reading about it, I have been steaming ahead writing my second novel, because I want to get that finished before I start out on the marketing treadmill for my debut.

So, if there are any wanna be authors reading this, I hope I haven’t put you off. You need nerves of steel, the constitution of an ox and a shed load of patience. I am struggling to concentrate writing this because I am so tired. I had a FaceTime call booked with my friend in the U.S. last night, but my brain was so frazzled, I completely forgot the time and fell asleep. Sorry, Jeannie. I hope you forgive me.

It has just gone 21:00 British Summer Time and once I post this article, I am off to bed to read a book. On the other hand, I might just have to listen to one instead. I am so tired, I can hardly keep my eyes open, let alone get my brain to comprehend the words.

Having said all of the above, I wouldn’t change anything for the world. Writing is my passion. I love it. I find it relaxing, in it’s own, strange way. Getting inside the character’s heads. The characters that I have created. It is a wonderful, heady, exciting and surreal feeling. To know that I have put these words onto a screen and one day (hopefully soon!) they will be in people’s hands around the world, for them to read and enjoy the story that I have created.

That is why I wanted to become a published author. I have read some of the reviews that have started to dribble in, and I was almost moved to tears. People enjoyed reading my book! Enough said.

If you would like to pre-order my book, or if you want to find out more about it, you can, here:

Thank you if you click the link. Sorry, I’m too tired to do a happy dance.

Have a great week,

Rosy.