Actual Progress? THIS CANNOT BE

Sometimes, an author's job is really hard, as in 'work my perky little butt off' hard.

I am here to report that the first round of editing is done for Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon, which I shall forever think of myself as At Least I Didn't Blow Up OUR Moon.

It took forever.  It took several times longer than any previous editing job.  It took two months to get the notes, and two weeks to go through them.  It took so long that I am not sure we can make the December 31st release date.  I'm not happy about that, but we play the hand we're dealt.  I certainly worked myself into exhaustion every day these last few weeks.

The first round of edits are also done for the first book, but my publisher and I agree that the second book is by far higher priority.  The updates to Supervillain can wait until Moon is finished.

Going forward, here is what has to happen:

A second round of editing, and possibly a third, must be finished.  While I cannot guarantee how fast my editor moves, the general rule is that these take a day or two total, because they involve editing 1/100th the content of the first round.

Then I make some minor changes to the text, adding in story elements my editor and I agreed on.  Then those have to be edited.  We're talking less than a page of content.

We send those to the proofreader.  In a normal editing run, this would be by far the biggest delay left, and it's the reason I don't think we can make the release date.  The proofreader cleans up misspelled words, out of place commas, incorrect grammar, stuff like that.  I have to go over those edits like I do the main edits, and it encompasses the whole book.  They are much faster than the regular round of edits because this is almost entirely limited, obvious stuff.  An awful lot is just 'accept accept accept' as commas scroll by.  However, there's no predicting how long it will take the proofreader to go through a whole book, especially since my books are never small.

I can't predict anything for sure, because this has taken so much longer than a normal editing job.  The biggest delays in the remaining rounds of edits should be me and my editor finding time to sit down and work.  That's how little actual work is left.

But this time, I don't know.

I haven't gotten to write in two months.  I'm looking forward to this being over.

Damn if you aren't getting a book that's polished until it squeaks.