Chapter 1 | What you need to know
From The Little Black Book of Publishing:
There comes a point when every writer will question when their book is ‘done’.
It is an impossible question to answer because it will be different for every single book written.
When I started building my Fully Booked program, I had to really think about where to lay the finish line. And it all comes back to your vision (and was the point I create The Vision Method, too). Fully Booked is designed around helping you to fulfil your vision for your book (more on that in chapter 5)!
A story is never done. The book we write is merely capturing a moment in time of the story we tell. There must come a point where we call being ‘done’ otherwise we would never stop revising and tweaking.
As a publishing coach, I teach a specific flow to writing and finishing your book. By the time you’re engaging with this course, I would expect that you have completed (or are in the process of completing) the necessary steps to have a pitch-ready book ( this process for hybrid and self-publishing writers too!).
Here are the steps I teach:
Write your story from start to finish, within 10% (over or under) of your word count goal.
Complete a self-structural edit
Receive feedback from alpha readers and/or obtain a professional manuscript assessment.
Implement any changes and assess if steps 2 and 3 need to be repeated.
Complete a copyedit.
Engage with beta readers and a sensitivity reader if necessary.
Implement any changes and assess if your vision for the book is working as you want it to. If there is work still to do, keep working through the steps until it does!
Proofread your manuscript.
Prepare your pitch (if required)
This flow, combined with The Vision Method, is what I use to help my clients determine when their book is done.
The Vision Method spans both Your Novel Adventure and Fully Booked group programs (run by yours truly through Debut Books) and captures the full experience of starting and finishing writing your book.
It is made up of three parts:
Capture the vision
Expand the vision
Complete the vision.
The Vision Method encourages you to identify and commit to the story you want to tell by developing a personalised writing process to guide your way forward. Your vision serves as your guide through the writing journey. When you have a clear vision for your story, you can take intentional steps to make it happen.
Getting clear on your vision is what will also help you overcome challenges, guide your goal setting, and helps to keep you focused.
The only way to know if the story you have written fulfils your vision is by receiving feedback on your work. Your reader (whether it’s an alpha or beta reader, manuscript assessor, or editor) will tell you. You cannot skip the feedback steps because your proximity to your own work will never fully reveal what yet needs to be done.
And yes, I am fully aware that we cannot control how the reader receives and responds to our work however, their feedback will tell you if there is a disconnect between what you set out to do, and what you have done.
When Editor Amy read the first draft of The Little Black Book of Publishing, she got the impression that I was preferencing one kind of publishing over the others which was far from my intent. We assessed what led her to that assumption and worked on ways to attempt to prevent other readers from doing the same.
At every step of the process, ask yourself: does the reader’s feedback reflect that my book is doing what I want it to do? Have you told the story you want or need to tell?