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I have this hobby project I've been working on for the last 3 years or so

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Mudcat

Mudcat

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It's a novel with the title Callie's Collection.

And it's done.

I mean, it's not done done. I could see myself futzing with it till the end of time. A phrase here - a semi-colon there. But I've decided it's time to move on to the next stages.

Presumably those next stages will be discovering nobody really cares and it will never make a dime - but you gotta try, right?

So this thread is basically a combo diary/motivational tool for that process.

So I guess I start by DuckDuckGoing: I've written a damn novel - what do I do now?

Here we go.
 
Mudcat
So I guess I start by DuckDuckGoing: I've written a damn novel - what do I do now?
Click to expand...


Turns out, I'm not even really ready for that. I did the search and some stuff came up to think about - and fret about - but I need to go through a formatting process first.

It's currently sitting in three Word files. I need to put it into some kind of e-book format I guess. It needs to be easily accessible and professional looking with headers and footers and pagination.

The search results I looked at were based on that already being done.

I don't know if there is a program/website that is considered state-of-the-art for that - so the job for today is to find out about that and get 'er going.
 
One thing that scared me right away was an article about proper lengths of novels.

My novel is short. Much longer than a novella but short. 58,000 words.

"Proper" length depends on the genre but everything in this article was telling me my book has to be at least 10-30K words longer. (Which I could do. It might take a year and may-or may-not compromise the artistic vision to an extent - but I could do it).

But just out of curiosity, I checked the length of my favorite novel of all time - which was a very successful book in the exact genre/category of my book: Breakfast of Champions.

56,000 words.

:dunno:
 
Mudcat
DEAR DIARY:
I finished my novel!!

It's a novel with the title Callie's Collection.

And it's done.

I mean, it's not done done. I could see myself futzing with it till the end of time. A phrase here - a semi-colon there. But I've decided it's time to move on to the next stages.

Presumably those next stages will be discovering nobody really cares and it will never make a dime - but you gotta try, right?

So this thread is basically a combo diary/motivational tool for that process.

So I guess I start by DuckDuckGoing: I've written a damn novel - what do I do now?

Here we go.
Click to expand...
:bee:
 
All the formatting got done. I figured I would like to have a few civilians read it before I start sending it to editors and agents - so I found just a few guinea pigs - and I got my first results today.

She loves it. She really loves it.

It's hard to fully explain what a relief that is.
 
No, not Jenny. My ex from the 90's.

It's good too because I know she isn't just going to say she likes it not matter what - just to be nice. She did not pretend to love my previous project which was my music album. Other than thinking the vocals were good, she was pretty meh.

But no, she really likes this. She's just one person but it's good.
 
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