One of the most exciting things I have done is to work as an “executive project manager” for my wife Wendi’s book/fairy tale about a princess who gets kidnapped and has her life hanging in the balance. Will the king find her in time? Will she be saved? Will she live happily ever after?
We are pushing to have the book ready for release on Valentine’s Day via Amazon’s Kindle store, and it has been a fun challenge bringing it to this point. Right now, all systems are go, but just like a NASA launch, we could get to T-minus 3 seconds and scrub the book’s launch. I don’t think it will happen, but it could.
Part of the challenge is that we are self-publishing the book, and I really would have it no other way. Sure, we won’t have a team of editors reading the book, but we had several friends along the way at various points of development, like Jeanine Kendle, Lydia Gehring and Linda Hall. We’ve been following the advice of Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch, co-authors of APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book
Through all of this, Wendi has been rewriting the book. (While it is a fairy tale, it is not necessarily a children’s book. It is a wonderful tale of faith, hope and love for people of all ages.)
In the final stages of the project, Linda made some insightful comments, as well as helping with some additional editing. Those comments led to another rewrite by Wendi. And, every time I edited the book, it seems there were mistakes I missed or mistakes I introduced into the copy. The editor’s oath is the same as the Hippocratic oath: Above all else, do no harm.
As Wendi was rewriting the story one more time, I told her it was wonderful to see the writing process in action. Yes, she wrote a story, but it does not mean it has to be the final word. And, it has not been. With each rewrite, the story became better and revealed more of God’s love.
Even though I have been in and around journalism since 1988, I have never seen the writing process like this. Journalism tends to be linear: You go to an event, you cover it, you come back and write your story, you send it to the editor and it gets printed in the newspaper.
But, this has been different. Questions were asked? What if the character does this? What if the princess says that? What if, what if, what if. Because this is Wendi’s story, she has to filter all of this new information in a way that is consistent with the story she set out to tell and decide if those suggestions make their way into print or not.
The title has been a struggle, and it has changed more times than I care to remember. I am not even hinting at a title here, because I am certain it will change again. We had artwork produced for the cover, and we are still up in the air as to whether it will be used.
We are excited; we are nervous; and we are tired. And, Thursday, we will know if Wendi is published. Stay tuned.
Note: I wrote the above for my blog The Z Section in 2013. Can’t believe it has been 3 years. So proud of Wendi and all she is doing. This is just a little taste of how it all began.