The journey continues

It's already August! Where does the time go? I have been trying to recap my writing experience and trying to remember back to January is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I promised you a journey though, and I am going to give it to you the best I can remember.

Okay, last blog entry I talked about my failed Kickstarter. That did not stop me by the way. It was just a little bump. I'm sure there will be many to follow. So, after my bump ... I went on to Createspace and created a profile. For those of you who don't know about Createspace, it is a great site for the technically challenged (I fit right into that category). They go through all of the steps; load your text file, load or create your own book cover, pick your number for your pricing and then they can help with getting your file over to Kindle. You do have to have an account set up for both. Createspace is the company that is doing your print copies ... so now its available at Amazon.com in print. Kindle is the electronic file that people can download on their devices. I would like to add, I knew none of this - absolutely zilch. Until, I just started digging around and doing a little research. The world wide web has so many sites that are offering up advice ... not all good, not all bad. The way I am learning is by taking pieces from others' experiences and rolling with it. There are a lot of Indie Authors out there, and a lot of them are giving advice. I guess I'm not really trying to give advice. That would be like, 'The blind leading the blind'. However, I am giving you the dirty facts of what I have done on my own personal writing journey.

My first copy of my paperback book arrives!! My heart flutters rapidly. I am so excited I could jump right out of my skin. This copy of course is to make sure everything looks okay. In my experience, a few things popped out immediately. The cover looked like it needed to be tweaked a little. My wording was halfway off the cover. The description on the back was spaced improperly. Easy fixes. Next came the hard part ... proofreading. It's easier to see your mistakes when you have it in book form, but after you have read your own work so many times, your mind plays tricks on you. You might read a sentence a hundred times and there is no "The" in the middle, but you know it's supposed to be there so your brain puts it there... even though it's not. We have to slow down and take the time to read our lines when editing. I grabbed my red pen and marked up my brand new novel. It was very emotional for me. My pretty new book was being desecrated. Yeah, yeah you say. Get on with it. Well, after proofreading, and changing the appropriate places in my file I uploaded it to Createspace again. After a few tries, I felt the book was up to par, and hit publish. It was finally done. Next comes the hard part. Getting visible.

RJ Heaton