The initial two weeks of retirement felt like a vacation. Although, I started to develop a routine for my day. I set my alarm for 5:45 AM each morning. (One hour later than I did while I was working.) I get up, make coffee, and read the paper. At around 7:00 AM, I take Bailey for a walk. After the walk, I sit down at the computer and work on my book until lunch, (11:00 – 11:30 AM). During that time I will either write new sections or edit existing sections. When writing I have a goal of at least 500 words per day. When editing, I try to do one chapter per day. After lunch, I plan on working on my office remodel, but the last two weeks were the UEFA Champions League and Europa League quarter-finals, which I watched.
During this time I submitted a 2500 word section from one of the edited chapters to the local ACFW (www.acfwcosprings.com) critique group. It was a real learning experience. My first mistake was the initial submission. I typically write in yWriter and export it to a Word document. I thought I submitted a Word .docx file, but actually submitted a text file (.rtf). When I converted it to the .docx file, I lost some of my formattings. The three people who critiqued my submission all noticed. Regardless, the feedback I got from them on the other issues was good. I had too many punctuation errors, and I still need to work on showing not telling. I am working on punctuation and other grammar errors during my editing sessions.
I downloaded the Grammarly (www.grammarly.com) free edition and also use the included Word Editor. Both give slightly different suggestions. One of the people who critiqued my submission also suggested ProWritingAid. Unfortunately, the free version limits you to 500 words, but I found a 40% off offer and purchased the full version of ProWritingAid (www.prowritingad.com) which I really like. I did not submit anything this week but will submit more in the future. One of the requirements for the group is for you to provide as many critiques, to other members, as the number of critiques you receive. I received three critiques, so I had to critique submissions from three other members. This was my first attempt at critiquing. I did receive positive feedback from them, but it is a learning process.
I also attended the monthly Zoom meeting of the local ACFW. The topic “How Not to Be Toast When Moving from Writing to Publishing” covered a lot of information on the time and money required to actually get a book published after it is completed. There is a lot of information floating around on self-publishing, but not much on the costs associated with it. It seems the Pareto Principle for writers is 80% of the money from selling books is earned by 20% of the authors. There are not many J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Beverly Lewis, or George R.R. Martins selling books. Regardless, as writers, we dream of making money selling our stories.
If you liked this post, please leave a comment on the contact page and subscribe to get notifications of future posts. By the way, I used Grammarly Free to edit this blog post.