Look what came in the mail! September 22, 2016

The proof copy is in!!  I'm excited!  This is so cool!  AAAHHH!

Look what I have!

  Okay, let's rejoice for a moment, shall we?
    Me - It looks like a real book!
    My hubby -  It IS a real book, honey.
    Me - ........... I guess so............

The windows go up the center!

  The cover is a matte finish.  My hubby really likes it because it makes the drawing of the cover art look like you could touch it and smudge the graphite.  I'm so happy the windows go up the middle of the spine!  I only had to upload that four times before that was finally correct.

Chapter 17?

  Okay, so, nitty-gritty.  I ordered this book proof so I can see what it looked like, hold it in my hands and read it to find any errors that needed fixing.  I like the feel of it.  It's really cool.  (I want to do another one!).  It's almost like holding your child for the first time.  It looks awesome inside.  (There's that 'it looks like a real book' thing again.)  I'm kinda in la-la land right now.  I have it here, I can read it, touch it... smell it.  It still doesn't seem real.


  So, now that I've had it for eighteen hours, what have I found so far?  First, it was TOTALLY worth it to buy the proof.  Originally, I wasn't intending on purchasing it, I was going to hit the publish button and go with it.  Well, the font on the title isn't correct (how did I miss that? - It's right in the mock-up).  Since I'm going to reload the cover, I'm going to blow up the art a little bit and eliminate some of the white on the sides of the front and back.  I read the first three chapters last night and I found four errors.  One is major, I went in to change the verb and didn't erase what I had in there (Dur).  One is a formatting error, I put in two dashes to make an 'em' dash and it didn't.  I forgot a period after a set of ellipses. And, I have a comma where I should have a period (Still a complete sentence, it just reads better as two).  The last three aren't a big deal and I might have left them if I hadn't found the first.  But since I did, I'm going to fix the tiny stuff too.  Might as well, right?
  I do have another pair of eyes looking for stuff.  Maybe between the two of us, we'll catch everything.

  I made a small advance in my floor plan drawing.  Freehand circles suck.  I should just break down and go buy another compass, but I don't want to go to the store.  :/  I only got 368 words written yesterday.  Yes, you saw that right, 368.  I think my creative tank is low.  Time to read something else.  I started reading The Maze Runner last night.  Halfway through the first chapter, I was thinking "That's what I'm doing wrong...."  After that, I read the first three chapters in my book.  I'm not doing anything wrong, it's just I'm in rewrite mode, so I think everything I've been writing is crap. 
  That's just how it goes.  The first draft (or fourth for that matter) is crap and it's ugly and it's full of grammatical issues.  It's not until you sit down and look at it and say "Okay, I've used 'irritated' seven times in this six page chapter," or "I have WAY too many adverbs in this section," that you actually turn something that's okay or good to something that's captivating.  It's part of the process.  I've been dealing in the muck this last six weeks, and so from my point of view, all I can see is yuck.