This week, I took a vacation from my real job so I could spend time on my writing job, and I wanted to share some of my experience.
The Good: My most important assignment this week was performing a final edit of my manuscript so it could enter the production queue. This involved hour upon hour (upon hour) of checking every word, researching grammar rules, making corrections, and re-reading every word once again. It’s a very long and time-consuming process, but thankfully it’s a process that I enjoy. I like picking my book apart and learning from my mistakes. From what I’ve heard, not all authors feel the same.
The rest of the week is for planning publicity, which leads me to my next subject.
The Bad: A big part of publishing a book is the marketing and publicity aspect. Publicity covers a lot of area, and includes the use of social media, websites, book signings, and so on. Unfortunately, for a lot of the publicity, and for the back cover of the novel, there is a need for an author photo. I say ‘unfortunately’ because I HATE having my picture taken. This is not something new. As a matter of fact, my mother loved to tell the story of when I was two years old, and they had a photographer come to the house to take pictures of us (apparently that was how they did it in those days). I hid under the bed and refused to come out, terrified of the camera, so my brothers had their picture taken without their baby sister. My mother wasn’t very happy, but I don’t know why she was so surprised. After all, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. She was also camera shy. All that to say, it’s the part of the process that I hate the most. Nevertheless, I should have a new author photo popping up soon.
The Ugly: This is something which has nothing to do with writing or publishing a novel, but which I feel needs to be said. I have an adorable dog, a pug/shih tzu mix, who is constantly being described as ugly. And this, by my friends and family, believe it or not. My sister-in-law said just yesterday, ‘He tries, but…nah.’. The truth is, he is very handsome and to know him is to love him.

So, what do you think? Am I right, or what?