The Three Phases of Creating a Book

Writing. Editing. Publishing.

Hi Friends,

I have been falling into a trap when writing where I think too far ahead. I’ll be drafting and plotting and I start thinking about the final book, what will have to be revised when, what formatting things I might have to put in or take out. I haven’t even decided on the character names and I’m sitting here thinking ok if I’m done by the end of the year then maybe this book (which has not been sold, mind you) can come out …… Like, what? Kate! What are you doing???? Sometimes it does not help to know this much about publishing.

I really, really, really need to stay in my lane when I’m drafting. Before there is even a complete draft, before there is even a complete outline for Pete’s sake, I need to just focus on the WRITING and leave everything else for later. There is enough to worry about in general—I should happily take some of this off my plate.

Here are the three phases of creating a book I’m going to focus on to try to make any small part of this easier, lol.

Writing

You literally cannot publish a book without writing it. Isn’t it the worst??? You cannot even edit a book until you write it. This is obvious, of course, but it’s something we forget. We think, and/or it feels like what you write down is going to go directly to the printer (or that it should be good enough to ha) and that could not be farther from the truth. The first draft of that last sentence you wrote has about a 13% chance of making it into the final manuscript. That might make you feel like there’s no point in even writing anything down BUT INSTEAD I invite you to find the freedom in this statistic I completely just made up. That last sentence has an 87% chance of GETTING BETTER with each draft, of which there will be A LOT. You’ll revise your work a bunch of times. Then you will likely revise it with your agent. And then with you editor and the copyeditor and the proofreader SO MANY TIMES. This isn’t having to do your homework over and over again—it’s multiple chances to improve. And that means the first time you put down words, it’s pretty low stakes! You might as well have fun with it. You might as well get something down so you have something to work with. Lower the stakes! Get it down! Shitty first drafts, as Anne Lamott says.

Editing

Annnnnnnnnd after the shitty first draft comes the editing. It can’t be all coasting down a hill of tk tk tk¹. There is a point at which you much face what you’ve written and whip it into shape. That shape is book shaped.

This can feel insurmountable. I wrote here on how to tackle the Big Project. There are many ways to do this, but you have to do it. You cannot, and should not, type The End and send your book off to agents or editors and pat yourself on the back for being so efficient for getting it right the first time. You probably did not get it right the first time, sorry. I have been this person. It does not lead to success.

If you think about editing as its own discrete phase of writing, as a necessary step and not a hurdle to cross, you’ll do right by your book and your career. I always say that I did not learn to write in my MFA program, but I definitely learned to edit. I learned to kill my darlings. I learned to look at a story as a whole and not just a series of pretty sentences that made me feel special to write. I learned that if I could write one sentence I liked, I could write another, and neither of them were so precious that they couldn’t be cut in service of the whole. It was only later (like last week) that I figured out that editing has to be its own thing, its own process, its own phase of writing, and that’s ok. It’s necessary. It’s part of writing. You can’t have one without the other.

Publishing

And then there’s the publishing process. That includes the query, the submission, the agent, the editor-submission, the acquisition, the editing, the publishing, the aftermath. It’s a big part! It’s a whole thing! And it’s its own thing. And you can only do it after you do the first two steps. I know this sucks to hear. I know it feels like too much. Self-publishing has almost all these things, too. Separating this out from the other two steps makes it more manageable, I promise.

There is just as steep a learning curve to publishing as editing and writing. You can be great at writing and not so great at the publishing part. You can write a FANTASTIC query letter but be not awesome at editing your novel. I’m sorry! I know that is spiking your anxiety because omg you have to be good at everything to get published how does anyone do it I’m never going to get published omg why bother?????? I mean, it is hard to get published. If it were easy you would not be reading this newsletter and I probably wouldn’t have a job. I’m not going to tell you to hustle or girlboss your way through how hard it is. I can only make it easier in these small ways through this newsletter that may or may not apply to your very specific book writing and publishing experience. I invite you, again, to embrace this uncertainty and throw your hands up to the gods and say I can only do what I can do! You will do exactly zero of these things perfectly. Agents and editors are not looking for perfection. They are looking for effort and magic and art and something book readers will buy. Publishing is not a meritocracy. It’s also not as small as you think it is. No one is guaranteed publishing. All that is published is not good or deserving, however you may personally define that. But it can happen, and it can happen to you. It is better to publish the book YOU wanted to write instead of what you thought publishing wanted.

Yes, It’s a Lot 

This might feel like more work, but it’s really not. It will save you energy, if not time, in the long run. If you think about the process in these three discrete steps, you will not be worrying about what agent you’re going to query before you’ve even gotten to chapter two. You will not be writing your query letter before you’ve gone through the first round of edits. You will not be changing your ending after you’ve already sent your queries (right????????). You can tackle each one of these steps on its own, focus there, and then move on to the next. And that way, you’re way more likely to do each step better, maybe faster, and certainly with more focus. There are probably 50 metaphors I can write here to explain why it’s important to do this one step at a time. You can think of 50 more because you are all (probably) writers and this is what we do. You don’t have to do things this way. There is no one true way of publishing. But if you’re feeling lost or spinning your wheels or unsure of how to proceed, try this, start here. I think it’ll work.

XOXOOXOX,

Kate

1. This is copyediting notation for <I’ll fill this in later>. Some say it means “to come” but with a k instead of a c because “TC” means Table of Contents. Others say it’s because “tk” is not commonly found in English so it’s easy to search for. Either way, use it liberally in your first drafts!