That’s such an odd phrase. But, it sums up the process of publishing a book perfectly (or at least it does mine.)
First, I get really excited about an idea. Usually my first step is to tell my somewhat bemused, somewhat confused husband in a disjointed fashion while he is watching a re-run of NCIS for the ka-billionth time. Leonard has learned by now that I’m probably going to change all the characters, identifying deals and most of the plot before the end. So, he no longer bothers to get very attached to them. My second step is to run it all by my best friend who is also surprisingly unconcerned that I talk about my ever-growing stable of characters as if they live right next door.
If the stories pass the Leonard and Heather test, then they hit the bottle-neck of voice activation software. This is an example of “wait” in “hurry up and wait”. I have never been very proficient at dictation. I don’t know I genuinely lack skill or if it’s related to my cerebral palsy. After a winter of severe health challenges, I finally finished a very long manuscript. The completed manuscript before I started doing edits was 142,000 words. I published the paperback version on CreateSpace today and the total page count is 396 pages or 123,501 words.
The publishing process has its own set of “hurry up and wait. I’m not proficient enough to design my own covers in Photoshop. So, I hire talented people like Ada Frost from Kage Cover Designs and the wonderful Michelle Wagoner from Phlair Photography. Then, I tried not to act like an inpatient four-year-old waiting for my birthday while they do their jobs and create a picture perfect cover featuring the beautiful Allison Crow. However, that’s not to say I didn’t refresh my email and browser every five minutes to make sure that I didn’t miss an update from them.
After you’ve edited your manuscript to within an inch of its life (because seriously, you never want to see it again after you’ve gone through this process-for weeks) and picked the perfect cover, then you submit it to be published. Guess what happens next? You guessed it…
You “hurry up and wait”. But, as soon as you hit the submit button, invariably you will notice some typo or glitch that you didn’t notice before despite how carefully you have scrutinized your manuscript for days. That means as soon as your wait is over, you have to start the process again and wait some more. So, Friday April 24, 2015 is the release date on Kindle for So the Heart Can Dance. The paperback version is already up on CreateSpace. It’s not quite linked to the Amazon account just yet. For that, it will be a few more days of “hurry up and wait.”
My last step—and the most agonizing—is to “hurry up and wait to hear what people think of what I’ve done. It’s far more nerve-wracking than getting my report card ever was.
So, in the mean time, I’ll just be sitting here “hurrying up and waiting” to hear from all of you as I work on Joy & Tiers (A Hidden Beauty Novel #3).