Yesterday, a card arrived in the post from an old friend of mine. This is someone who’s known me since I was at school, through getting my first short story published when I was 17, through all the years of not doing very much writing, and my more recent journey as an indie author. It was a “I-saw-this-an-thought-of-you” type card, with an inscription congratulating me on getting the draft done and sent off to my developmental editor. And I thought, yup, that’s someone who understands the importance of the stages within the journey, not simply reaching the final destination.
We are often advised to set clear goals in order to achieve anything – and of course, that’s eminently sensible. But we also have to remember to come up with a strategy to reach those goals – something that is achievable for us, which is just on the cusp of being challenging but not so difficult that we simply give up, disheartened. And in that process, we have to create some mini-milestones, both to enable us to chart our progress more easily, but also to give ourselves a much needed boost when we’re feeling lost in the muddled middle.
If you’d spoken to me last Friday evening, I would have told you that I was quite ready to chuck my draft of ‘Against the Clock’ into the bin. There was almost nothing I liked about it, and I feared it was not salvageable. But on Saturday morning, after getting up early to check on the horses, I went back to my “office” (a.k.a. the spare room), sat with the printed manuscript and went through it, correcting bits, scribbling arrows to move chunks around, and thinking about the cohesive whole of the story. Whether it was having had a decent night’s sleep, or simply the energizing pressure of a looming deadline, I suddenly felt more optimistic. I worked on it until midnight on Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday, and it finally went off to the developmental editor on Sunday afternoon.
There is still a ton of work to do on the book before it’s published. In due course, I’ll have to respond to the comments from my editor, carry out a lot of re-writing, send it back for her to review again, and then there’s the proof checking, the blurb and cover design, not to mention feedback from my beta readers. But as my friend’s card reminded me, it’s important to celebrate each mini-milestone along the way. So right now, I’m just taking a breath and saying, ‘Yay!’ for getting through this preliminary stage. 😊
Jenny Roman 