Not actual publishing, of course. I'm a long way off that. But I've finally submitted my manuscript and cover to CreateSpace, the self-publishing company that's given all 2007 and 2008 NaNoWriMo winners a free proof copy of their book. Now all that remains is for CreateSpace to approve my files for printing, and for me to order a copy of my book. Ee!
I'd always decided never to do the self-publishing thing. It doesn't make you a published author, in my eyes. It makes you someone who couldn't make it in the real world so reverted to doing it themselves.
But when it came to passing up a free hard copy of my story... well, this may be the only chance I ever get to see my story in book format. I'm not going to try and sell it; I just want one copy, just for me, to sit in my bookcase as a tangible record: this is what I've done. This is what I wrote.
It's a great feeling to have submitted the files. But there's no rest for the weary, and I'm really hoping that my new unemployment will help me get going on my other manuscript. It took me 2-3 weeks to ready this story for submission; and this story needed very little editing (or rather, needed so much that I decided to do very little and leave it mostly as is).
My other manuscript, on the other hand, is over 100,000 words and needs about 50k more, which means at least a couple of weeks of dedicated writing; after that I have the gargantuan task of trying to edit the monster before I submit it. And unlike my first manuscript, which I was content to leave as a not-very-well-written story, I want this one to be good. I want this one to be able to meet a publisher's eye one day. I want to be proud of this one, to allow my friends to read it.
The amount of time it'll take almost makes me glad I'm going to be unemployed, although the complete lack of income won't be so great.
I'm not going to start today. It's a weekend, and Dan's around, so I'm gonna hang out with him and do some work on the house.
It's on Monday that the real work will begin.
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