How a Book Gets Made (Part 7)
(The one where you finish the book)
After sending my agent my revised draft in late November, I took a two-month writing break while awaiting her final(?) comments and edits.
It’s the longest I’ve gone without writing, and it allowed me to replenish the well. I read some amazing books and critiqued manuscripts for friends. I’m a firm believer that breaks are as important as pushing through.
I received Joanna’s comments on January 31, 2025, and the good news is that it was less than two dozen minor edits—clarifying comments, grammar mistakes—and the suggestion to add an interaction in Act 2 that will up the tension when it comes to a head in Act 3.
I like to work on paper and quickly implemented all of Joanna’s small edits and wrote the new scene, which I shared with Mara Williams and Jessica Banks.
My last step was listening to the entire book read aloud. I think this is an essential final stage before your book is fully finished. It helps you find the little typos that you missed on your passes and helps identify if there are any clunky or awkward sentences.
I cannot stand listening to Microsoft Word’s robot voice, so I fed my book through the Voice Dream text-to-speech reader. The voices are good enough that it *almost* felt like listening to an audiobook. I caught a handful of additional things to change but was pleasantly surprised by how good the book already was. Like, I wrote this??!! (Big believer in being your own cheerleader)
So, I have officially sent my agent the final version of my book and now she will do some additional meetings with editors to determine who it is a good fit for. And then, we go on submission (sending the book to editors at different publishing houses).
And that means that the fate of this particular book is officially out of my hands. I hope that it will sell, but I also know that at this stage of the publishing game, so much is dependent on luck and timing.
But damn, I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished, and that’s all I can control.
This concludes the “How a Book Gets Made” series until I can talk about whether or not the book sells. The truth is, I could know quickly or not for a year or more. So, thanks for joining me on this journey of writing my heist rom-com. I hope that one day I’ll be able to point to this series and show exactly how this story came to fruition.
What I’m Reading
It feels like I am late to the game on Alison Espach’s The Wedding People, but I’m so glad that I finally got a chance to read it. The beginning of the book is very dark, so please check the trigger warnings. It’s such a beautiful, wickedly funny story about a woman with nothing to lose. I can’t recommend it enough.
What I’m Eating
This tomato soup is the perfect winter dinner. I paired it with garlic bread, but grilled cheese would also be excellent.