It's Done! The Beauty Is Finished!

When I finished The Beast, I think I expected everything to fall perfectly into place. I'd quit my day job and had thrown myself full into being an author-- a dream that I'd worked very hard to achieve. In my mind, I had it all figured out. Ya know, I'd written and published a book. I was no longer a newb! But, what I soon learned was that the plan is not always so easily executed.

I wrote The Beauty in record time (Record time for me, that is). A matter of months perhaps. But, it's really the editing that I've been working on for the last year.

First, I was tearing the words apart. Over analyzing every inch of it, and making myself miserable. When I realized what I was doing, I tried pulling back some. I still wanted to clean the book up as much as I could, but I didn't want to it to push the book's release back so far that it actually hurt the book. And that still may have happened. I won't know until the book releases.

Even after recognizing that I was overdoing the editing, it was still a roller coaster. I flew through some chapters, while others took me days to get through. On top of all that, life events kept getting in the way. When I'm stressed or depressed, it's really hard to get work done.

But I trudged on. And at times, it really felt like trudging lol. Get this, I finished The Beauty (edits and all) exactly one year after I finished editing the first chapter. Is that some crazy symmetry or what? I mean, I never want to take that long to edit a book again but wow, symmetry.

So the book is done. I love it sooooo much! It turned out a thousand times better than I ever imagined. No matter how many bad reviews I may get, it will not diminish how proud I am of this book.

Now, I know what you're wondering...Lindsay? Are you going to take a year to edit all of your books? Answer: God, I hope not. That would sooo not be good for my career. Readers are far too hungry and there is far too much competition in the self-publishing world for me to take that long. With each book, I get better at writing and, therefore, editing should get easier. I do have some plans on how I can change up my publishing strategy that could assist in this problem, but I'll talk more on that in another post.

So, that's it for now. I will be posting updates far more often in the coming weeks. Those updates will include a release and some "Behind The Scenes" where I'd like to discuss scenes from The Beast. I'm hoping those'll be something fun where I can share my thoughts behind those scenes and maybe my readers will pop in a comment or two. Till then, happy reading! -Lindsay Mead


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