Today I have some exciting news. As of a few days ago, I am roughly halfway done with Act III! Despite this milestone, I still have several weeks of work ahead of me before I’ll have a finished manuscript. In this update, I want to give you an idea of what I have left to do, and share how you can read my book before everyone else.
Over the five years that I have been working on this project, I have developed a four-stage writing process, Draft, Write, Edit, Polish. While I don’t define each stage in concrete terms, this system is beneficial because it provides me with a basic idea of how much work I have left to do.
Last week I wrapped up the “Writing” stage of Act III. This week I will start the “Edit” stage, where I will clean up the text and make it easy to read. After that is the “Polish” pass, where I will make sure everything is formatted correctly and run Act III through my grammar checking software. Based on previous experiences, it should take about three weeks to finish this section, at which point I will be done with all my rewrites and be very close to having a manuscript draft.
To have a completed manuscript, I will need to review the entire book scene by scene. This in-depth analysis will help me identify any continuity problems and provide a list of final edits. While I'm unsure exactly how long this process will take, I aim to finish the manuscript by early October, at which point I will send my book out to publishers and share it with early readers.
In the fall, I will be looking for a few people to provide feedback on my manuscript. If this is something that you might be interested in, I will be providing details on how you can join my early reader program in the coming weeks. Alternatively, you can become a Contributing Memberand receive a copy of the manuscript as soon as it’s ready. Besides getting access to behind-the-scenes bonus material, Members will be invited to participate in a virtual Q&A session with yours truly.
I hope this gives you an idea of what to expect over the coming months. I’m thrilled with how the story is coming together, and I cannot wait to share it with you.
In closing, I want to share a quote from the T.V. show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which my wife and I have been watching over the summer. It eloquently sums up what this whole endeavor has meant to me.
"And look, I don't know if what I'm doing is any good, but all I know is that I can finally show the outside world what's been inside of me this whole time. All of it. All of the nuances and the gray areas. It's not just about the act of writing. It's about how when I'm doing that, when I'm telling my own story, for the first time in my life, I am truly happy."
Sincerely,
Nelson/Roberto
I had big plans for this fall, but unfortunately, I've been dealing with some minor health issues. It's nothing serious, but I have decided to take a few months off from the newsletter and content updates to focus on my health.
I forgot to mention in my last update that I was going on vacation in August. As a result, I didn’t have time to write a proper update this month. The newsletter will return in three weeks with another Beyond the Book post.
Over the past month, I queried three literary agents and took the most significant break from the book since I started the project in January 2016. Even though taking a break feels a little weird, it is nice to slow down and give the story (and myself) space to breathe.
