I recently published a short story on my blog about Gary and Gerty Hanover who live on Hanover Lane. They enjoy drinking coffee and reading books. Aside from their Thursday morning trips to the bank and the market, they avoid doing much else. I finished writing the short story and I found that I liked the characters enough to create a longer story about their lives. Thus, I have written a short novel with the working title of Gerty and Gary of Hanover Lane. This morning, I completed the first draft on paper and began typing the draft into Google Docs. I imagine it will take me several days to transcribe the text.
When I finish doing that, I will read the book and make corrections and additions to the story along with some reductions that fail to move the story along. I will then have my Ideal Reader (my wife Kayla) read the book and tell me where it is boring, what is funny or interesting, and what she thinks should be changed. (This sounds fun, doesn’t it?) I will take her suggestions as, just that, suggestions and make changes where necessary.
Then, I will let the book sit for six weeks (I have another book in this position currently. The Recruit.) During those six weeks, I will work on other projects and simply let Gary and Gerty rest. At the end of that period, I will re-read the book and make any new changes that we deem necessary. Then we will read the book multiple times, looking for typos and grammatical errors and checking for holes in the story and whatnot. Additionally, we will read the story out loud to each other at least once, probably twice or more.
At that point, we will be sick of reading this story! And it will be time to format it for publishing to Amazon as a print book and ebook so that it may join my other books on the digital shelf.
I hope you will join me, Kayla, Gary, and Gerty on this journey. See you on the other end.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels