RAtR: After The End

This isn’t a treatise on dystopian fictions! This month, we are writing about what happens after a writer types THE END in capital letters, centres them, saves the file and posts all over their social media that their masterpiece has finished?

Erm. Well. Lots and lots. And I guess people work in different ways, so this is my own process. I’m looking forward to reading what my #RAtR colleagues do and how their approach differs.

I’m going to assume infinite time, here, rather than working to a deadline, which might mean steps are compressed or jumped.

I write in Scrivenor, usually with the document divided up into chapters or into point of view (POV) which are sometimes the same thing. I colour-code my character points of view so if I want to I can narrow down my view to see which part of the story individual characters are narrating. I try and write between one and two thousand words per session (every day if I’m on form), and at the beginning of each session I go back and read what I wrote the day before and tweak it.

 The first thing to do once I get to the end of the story is go right back to the beginning and search for every instance of four stars, ****, which I use to leave myself notes.

Usually past-Ally says things like ****PUT IN MORE SEX HERE or ****WORK OUT BACKGROUND AND INSERT HERE, or ****LOOK UP LENGTH OF CHAMPS ELYSEES, or ****MAKE CHARACTER MORE LIKEABLE HE’S A SHIT-HEAD or even just a bare ****400 MORE WORDS HERE. Present-Ally is always absolutely delighted to find these little reminders of how slack past-Ally has been.

Once I’ve done this and I’m happy with what I’ve got, I export the document to Word. With some judicious formatting, that turns it into a coherent draft that I can send off to my lovely beta readers with chapter headings, a rough blurb at the beginning and an index. Usually I go through before I do that and try and do line edits to remove instances of words like just, then, really and my subconscious’ current favourite, a bit. Sometimes past-Ally doesn’t do that though and I include a note to my betas to say please ignore the slacker.

At this point if I’m self-publishing, I make a cover (if I haven’t already) and put the book up for preorder on the various ebook platforms.

If I’m working with a publisher (shout-out to JMS Books!) I fill in a blurb form and I look at the stock photo sites they use to find a few images that I feel are suitable and fill in a cover form describing what I would like.

Once the beta notes are back, I go through the manuscript and take the beta feedback on board. Then I do a rough proof read.

Then if it’s a publisher-book, I send the manuscript, the blurb form and the cover form off to the publisher, who sends me a contract to sign digitally (after careful reading of course!). If it’s a self-published book, I send it off to my editor.

Then, either way I’m working, I make a load of promotional images in Canva and I put together a document with various social media posts I can use for marketing. The first line, a kiss snippet, that sort of thing. I sometime create posts and visuals with a character sketch. I update my website and social media headers with graphics of the new book.

Once I have a cover, I put together a media pack, which is basically a document with all the info bloggers and reviewers could need to decide whether they want to host a release announcement or request an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC). So, publication date, ISBN number, links to where it can be pre-ordered/bought, keywords, a tag-line, the blurb, the cover, and perhaps an excerpt. Oh, and a little biography at the bottom with my social links.

Then I decide how skint I am and either pay for a blog tour, someone to approach reviewers and bloggers for me; or I contact them myself.

All this time I am writing every morning, working on my next story. And I am doing a bit of social media activity to remind readers I exist, plus sending out my newsletter. And I am maybe tweaking my Amazon Ads and my Facebook Ads if I have them running.

After two or three weeks, then, I get the first round of edits back from my editor. I go over the manuscript and accept or reject her corrections and suggestions. She does a light proof at this point and leaves me sarcastic comments if she finds anything that doesn’t make sense. I do even more proofing and take her advice about the things that don’t make sense, leaving her equally sarcastic comments. Then I send the manuscript back.

We do that a couple of times more and when I’m happy with it I listen to it through using the Word Read Aloud function. It’s much the best way to catch spelling errors and autocorrects that have slipped by. Then, I turn it in to an ARC copy and I send it out to my ARC readers and any reviewers who have requested it and I load it up on to the ebook sales sites that I have put the preorders up on.

That’s it, basically. I spend far more time on the ‘after THE END’ part than I do writing. It’s so easy to get sucked into the marketing, social media and tweaking advertisements or your website part of the cycle than it is to knuckle down and actually produce words. I’m not unusual in this. I haven’t read any of my colleagues’ pieces at the time of writing this, but I bet my sizeable arse that they are saying much the same thing.

Obviously I publish with a small press; if you work with a larger press or are traditionally published with one of the big five, the process is different—much more drawn out for a start. However, I’m very happy with my hybrid set-up, with some of my work being all my own responsibility and some being partly the publisher. Unless you’re a mega-seller these days, you do most of your own marketing as a writer, however you’re published.

So…have a look at what my colleagues have written here!