Celebrating

I’ve finished my part of the work, and Rick now has the complete manuscript.  He is working diligently with his highlighter pen and pencil at the nook table.   He’s passed me half the chapters, and I will be putting his changes into the computer this week.  As soon as all of his changes are grafted in, I will email the project to my agent who will format it for the editors at Tyndale.  Every chapter is a file and she knows how to put it all together so it can be read on a Kindle.  I haven’t a clue how to do that.

I know and am preparing for more work once my trustworthy agent, her associate and editors at Tyndale get their hands on it.  After months of focusing on the characters and story, I can be too close to see weaknesses.  I know what I want the story to be (in my head), but have I succeeded in putting that down in writing?  Fresh and expert eyes are good.  Some characters may disappear, others get built up.  We usually have a conference call and talk about what they see and what more (or less) they’d like to see. 

The one thing I know they will all say is, “We must cut the length.”  I deleted 25 pages, and then somehow managed to add enough to swell this manuscript to a whopping 670+ pages.  Yikes!  We’ll be doing some brain-storming on what and how much will be cut.   (This is why I have such a hard time writing novellas! I have been known to widen margins and use 1.5 spacing instead of double just so I can squeeze more in.  Not that I’ve ever fooled anyone.) 

All this to say, the book is done!  Well, almost.  Enough that I can take a deep breath and start focusing on Jesus’ birthday!