It's OVER for the most part. I always do that, I write that it's over when it's just ended. There is such a huge difference. It has ended in that I am no longer writing the book It is done, but it is not FINISHED because I now have to go through it to add this or that. When you add this or that, you also have to consider removing this or that. You find mistakes, you overlook mistakes, and you set it all aside for a day or so before going back over the pages to see if there are those mistakes you were looking for.
I am not going to add another chapter. I am going to only check to be sure that the ones I've written are complete. I'll run through them quickly for spacing, then begin editing them using the best-case scenarios I can. I don't care about grammar because when I write a book, especially a novel, there will be a license for not using proper grammar. Some of the characters speak like me...yeah, not all that proper.
So, the book is done in that I've just finished. I won't give away anything, but I will need to go back and add a couple of descriptions of clothing, or hats, something to make the chapter pop. That's what the next tweak is. I go back over it, find room for descriptive words and I fluff it, stuff it, brand it, make it pretty, make it lively, and change the word count all at the same time. I'll end up with 82,000 words I'm sure. I typically try to get 86,000, but we're good.
I won't format the book until I'm dang sure that it's about finished. I have a cover already made, so I'll need to see if it's crafted to the right size. If I need another 2000 words you can bet I'd rather write them than go back and change the cover! It's a mess trying to do that over and over again. I can dang well better come up with words than try and manipulate a book spine. Nope. Not fighting that dog.
Tonight I'll go through it for spacing. Tomorrow, Sunday, I'll go over it for misspelled words, any words that I need to add to the dictionary or words that could be spelled one way or another. I'll try to add a few quirks to Arran's accent. He's Scottish, I haven't been paying much attention to his voice. I need to go back over everything he says and add a bit of brogue to it. That'll be fun. I won't go all Gaelic on anyone, but I will use colloquial terms such as using "no goin' there" for "not going to go there" and that sort of thing. Elyn describes a garbage disposal to Arran at one point, and his eyebrows lift to think of what could happen if he made a mistake in the kitchen after drinking a bit.
Good times. I'll catch you in a couple of days after I've gone over it. The book took less time to write than any other full-sized book I've ever written. I started it around 1:00 p.m. on 8/22/2023 and finished it around 2:00 p.m. on 9/2/2023 so that's what, 11 days and an hour? Not bad. I don't think I'll do that again -- it was just something I was doing between jobs.
Tying the Knot!! (Guess where that idiom came from, folks.)
Photo Credit: TheKnot.com
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