Wayback Machine

Let’s jump in the wayback machine to 2021. This will set the stage for the next few posts about having my book edited and my experience searching for an agent.

In July 2021 I started writing First, which had been percolating in my brain for several months. I finally decided it was time to stop thinking and start writing. As documented in a previous post, I moved my morning wakeup time progressively earlier. One other thing I did was to purchase a new personal laptop so I wasn’t using my work computer for writing. That way there’s no questions later. It’s better to keep the personal that way, and besides, IT policy is to not use the work computer for personal business. So, all good there.

That project took about three months and I finished the first draft at the end of September 2021. It came in at about 110k words, which is pretty long for a novel. I immediately started on The Assignment, which later became Assignment Day. This allowed me to put First out of my mind for a bit.

In November 2021 I paused writing the new book and did my initial pass at editing First. I shared it with some of my family members but then put it back in the e-drawer while I worked more on Assignment Day.

My sister put me in touch with one of her friends, who is a professional editor, and I queued up on her schedule for late January. Right at the beginning of January 2022 I did another round of editing so First would be in tip-top shape, at least as far as I was concerned. Then back to writing Assignment Day while I waited for the edits.

And that’s where we’ll pick up in the next post…