Almost Ready to Publish: “The Alien Visitation Chronicle”

It’s almost ready and it’s making me nervous. Did I catch all the errors? Probably not. According to a reader of my first novel, “Millie’s Adventures in Time,” there were a lot of errors in it. Of course, “a lot” is a very relative term. I asked her if she made note of them. No. How many were there. Not a clue. It makes me nervous for this next novel.

I proof read this one forward. Then I proof read it backward. I found a few errors both times.

I was advised not to edit at the same time as proof reading. That proved to be more difficult than I had imagined it might. But it’s good advice.

So. I’ve uploaded the manuscript to Kindle Direct Publishing. It loaded successfully and it has been processed by their programming. I am in the process of proofing this new copy of it. I found some formatting errors and have fixed them, hopefully. I re-uploaded it and called it a day.

Today, I will go over the copy to be published again. Hopefully I won’t find any more formatting errors. But you never know. Then there is their version of spell check.

Unfortunately, I used a lot of made-up words in the telling of this story. Plus there is one chapter where a character has such odd speech that the words I created to depict it will most likely all set off the KDP spell checking program. It will be a lot of work to get it all straightened out. I know this from previous experience with my first novel. But it all helps in producing a final work that I can be proud of.

Oddly enough, I don’t worry that the story is any good (I did worry about that a lot with the first novel though). Or if it is engaging and entertaining. I figure it won’t be to the taste of everyone. Nothing is. So that’s not really an issue for me. I like it. My husband likes it. That’s good enough. But I want it to be clean and easy to read and that’s where a lot of my anxiety lies. Well, that and wondering what people will think of the Dianne Lehmann who wrote this story. That’s largely only a problem for me with the people I know. I’ll probably never get over that kind of anxiety. Shyness and performance anxiety have plagued me all of my life.

I mentioned to my sister how close I was to publishing and how I was becoming more nervous (excited too, to be honest) and wondered if I would be able to press the “Publish” button when the time came to do that. She kindly reminded me that I had done that once already and survived it. I’ll survive it this time too.

Thanks, Sis, for always helping to keep me firmly grounded.