As you may know, I’ve just released the print version of my book “Fall in Love With Life“. The process seemed to take forevaaaaaaaaaaaah…and this is the article I wrote 7 weeks into the editing process.
Oh. My. God. This process is taking FOREVAAAAAAAAH. I finished the book on August 6th. And I haven’t even started on the ‘real book’ edit yet. Huff, puff, mutter, grumble, chunter. Of course, this is partly my own fault, because as usual I packed my days with extra other stuff that I had to do as well as working on the formatting edits.
Sigh.
And have I ever told you that I am HUGELY impatient?! It’s been a trial, lemme tell you. Not just because the formatting work is really quite tedious, but because I want the book to be available to the world AND I have other projects I want to get on with. And it’s dragged on and on and on.
And only people who’ve been through this particular crazy ride that get that you can say “I’m finished” one week, then 7 weeks later STILL be working on it. But, as ever, nothing is every wasted if you learn from the experience! So, what have I learned?
1. Don’t tell people it’s finished until the formatting crap is done. No one wants to hear “yeah, that bit was finished, but there were still 700 other things to do”. More to the point, I don’t want to say it.
2. Many people believe a 60000 word book can be written, edited, formatted so it doesn’t look like it’s been cobbled together by a mad axeman in your e-reader, and out in the world in 2 minutes flat. There may be someone who can do that. I’m not that person. I can help these people to not wind me up saying things like “oh are you still working on that?” by following lesson number 1.
3. Shit takes longer than you think it will. Always. I have lived this lesson a thousand times over the years – from my days in IT where we overestimated the length of every task and it still took longer, to every project I have ever done for my business…it all takes longer than you think. Set your expectations accordingly. I now know to leave 2 months from ‘finish’ to ‘full release’. At least.
4. If you get over excited and schedule in new projects before your first project is really finished, it will slow down the process. Me, I decided to have a blog party, which meant lots of e-mails and blog posts and testing links and all sorts of faff AND I also decided to launch a survey…which I took time to reply to every response for. This did not help me finish the formatting! Not doing that again.
5. Test, test, and test again – in every format you are able to. The word version worked, but then the Kindle version links went to the previous page (bookmarks and page breaks are not a great combination, it turns out)…and that sort of thing can happen in any format – it looks fine in one, but really weird in another – test them all! (this is why shit takes longer than you think it will! Tech always throws in a head-scratcher of a problem to make sure you’re paying attention!)
6. Lists are your friend. Don’t think you’ll remember to come back to something, you won’t – write it down. It saves thinking you’re finished then finding a mistake you spotted a week ago but forgot to fix!
7, Impatience isn’t helpful. Impatience actually slows you down (ironic, right?) Dance it out, write down your frustrations, shake it off and change your energy before you start taking action. Otherwise the old adage “more haste, less speed” will kick your ass from here to Tuesday!
8. Just keep swimmin – it’s the only way to get it finished. Huff and puff and chunter if it helps you…but then sit your backside in the chair and take the next action…and the next…and the next. It’ll be finished eventually!
9. There’s a new project looming, you may as well enjoy this process! One of the reasons I started my survey (aka distraction from what I was trying to finish) was to help me decide which of the “6 projects I want to work on next” I should focus on first. The moment the physical book version of Fall In Love With Life is done, there will be a new project for me to start chuntering about it taking forever…and this will go on for every day of my life I’m sure…so I need to find away to enjoy EVERY part of the process, not just the super-fun creative bit.
10. It’s all good. Always. The next time I do anything like this, it’ll be easier because of what I’ve learned this time. The learning curve may be steep…but then soon you’re an expert in bookmarks and formatting for ebooks (or as expert as you need to be). Delays and problems may feel like a huge pain in the ass, but if you can trust that any delay is actually beneficial somehow, it helps to ease the pain! And often, those delays and problems ARE beneficial for some reason. We’re a world of ‘want it now’ people…but sometimes you’ve just got to ease into ‘it’ll happen in the right time’ – to save your sanity if nothing else!
Have you had a project that took forevaaaaaaaaaah?! What did you learn about how to do it better and easier next time? I’d love to hear your insights.
