Annnette Lyon is giving away free copies of All The Stars in Heaven by Michele Paige Holmes, the sequel to her first book Counting Stars
I’ve been deep in the middle of coop building, editing, and preparing for the LDS Storymaker’s writer’s conference this Friday and Saturday. And if I can get my new printer to work right, I’ll be dropping a copy of my finished manuscript to my publisher tomorrow. It’s funny, I would have thought that once I got an acceptance my anxiety over submitting would lessen. After all, they liked what I wrote last time, and my writing has improved (after all, I only wrote 10 versions of this story instead of 15, and it’s way more publishable now than the Ball’s in Her Court was at this point.)
Instead, I find myself more nervous. They liked the first one, what if they don’t like this one? What if I missed something important and it falls flat? No one has read it in at least….two months (and a solid edit), what if the changes I made are awful? Even though I know thw writing is solid, I’m still tied up in knots about it, and it has occured to me more than once that it is just plain awful! Which means, it’s probably past time for me to submit it–hating your book is a classic sign that you’ve edited it enough, after all. At least it’s supposed to be a sign if you’ve really liked it once, and now you’ve grown to hate it.
And I have another I’m supposed to be turned in to my friend Danyelle so she can critique it for me, but I’m finding more scenes that need to be written and angles that need to be developed better, so I may not get it finished TONIGHT to print for her. I guess we’ll see. And if you’ll be at the conference, stop and say hi, would you?
Hey, thanks for mentioning my book! And boy, can I relate to your worries. The not-so-great thing about readers liking your first book, is that you’ve got a tough act to follow. In my case I worry this next one has had too many eyes on it, too many fingers in the pie (I’ve gone through three different editors during the process). A lot has been changed, and well, I’m just not sure it all works like I’d envisioned. So, sharing your jitters 🙂 See you at the conference.
I can see how you would grow to eventually hate your book…or maybe a better word is grow sick of it. Hashing and rehashing has to be brutal. Good luck at the conference!