I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 27th

Books by G.B. Miller

Boy howdy and howdy to the ingenue who can destroy others with just a pout and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where cliches go to become resurrected and turned into a nifty little song, and originality is groomed to be the Master of my Domain.

So, we've gone off the proverbial path as it applies to my writing for the past few posts, and while it was refreshing change of pace (at least for me), it's time to get back into the swing of things and return to our chosen path of destruction.

Earlier last week, I finally received my manuscript back from my editor. I actually squealed with delight upon receiving it, because that meant I would be finally able to move on to the next phase getting book #2 published, which is getting a book cover for it, and since I'm currently on an almost week's vacation, I figured it would be a good time to work on it.

Right.

I printed out both the chapter review summary (20 pages) and the editorial overview (36 pages) and got ready to spend a few hours this past Saturday reading and digesting what the editor did to/for my manuscript.

As per my norm, I started reading bass-ackwards. Suffice to say, shock and awe was the call of the day, and I mean that in the positive way that it should be taken. Once I picked up my jaw from the grass and reattached it, I started reading the editorial overview. I stopped after eight pages. Not because I didn't agree with what was written, which I 100% absolutely did, but because I quickly realized that I needed to carve out a better block of quiet time with no distractions (I had originally started reading this while listening to music on my smart phone), so that I could properly digest and comprehend the good, the bad and the ugly.

Long story short, I wrote this trilogy strangely, in that I wrote book #3 first (about 20% completed and tossed), book #2 second, book #1 third and book #3 will be written fourth. Weird I know, but this is the brutal end result of inspiration.

From what I gleaned from the 8 pages that I'd read, I did some things quite well, but properly writing a series was not/is not one of them. Suffice to say, I do have a moderate amount of work ahead of me in order to make this book shine. I did have to do some additional work with book #1 based on the sound advice that a different editor gave me, but the additional work needed for this book will be uncharted territory for me. Thanks to my wonderful editor, this book is about 85% ready for publication. The remaining 15% will be entirely up to me, which I will attack with gusto once I read the editorial overview from cover to cover as well as the chapter summary (again) to see just exactly what I need to do.

So, in the end, this post becomes the intro for a new series of posts about editing, specifically, what I need do to make this book the best it can be. Next week, I will cover the good, the bad, and the ugly of what my strengths and weaknesses were with this book.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved