Dawn Colclasure's Blog

Author and poet Dawn Colclasure

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

There is book work, and then there is "book work"

Even though I have several book projects going on at the moment, four of those books are my top priority. They are a priority because I have set deadlines for them and I hope to meet those deadlines.

Even so, a new book project may spring up here or there. For example, I wrote the first draft of a new children’s book last weekend. This one will become my weekend project because I am planning to submit it in December. Of course, I’ll probably finish revising the text long before December, but I want to give the illustrator plenty of time to create the illustrations.

During the week, however, I work on my “top four” books. And lately, I have averaged working on two a day. I rotate between them, working on them when there is actually work. (Three of them are nonfiction.) This works well for me because I stay busy even when I have to wait on something for another book (as so often happens when writing nonfiction). There is always something to stay busy with.

So, yes, I have worked on two a day so far. For today, however, my “book work” was a little bit different.

I did work on one book, the health book, today during the time I had available to work on it. And, later, I sat down at the desk ready to work on the haunted cities book. (I can’t believe I am almost done with it! Very exciting!!) However, when I logged in at my writing email account, there was a different kind of book work waiting for me. Namely, going over the proof of my forthcoming poetry book, Follow That Dream, as well as formatting the manuscript.

That kind of “book work” pops up from time to time. I’ll need to go over proofs or format manuscripts. Sometimes I’ll need to do research or fact checking. Or I may do something related to book promotion, as Jennifer and I did yesterday for our poetry book Dogs Forever. Sometimes, the book work I do won’t involve writing a book, but getting it ready for submission or publication.

And as for today, I got that other kind of “book work” done but didn’t have time to work on the haunted cities manuscript. Still, it’s all good. I hope I’ll have more work waiting for me for the haunted cities book tomorrow – say, getting back an interview I did with a paranormal investigator or hearing from another investigator that the story I put together based on an interview checks out okay. (Once everything is approved, I’ll add that chapter to the final manuscript.) The important thing is I got some kind of book work done for the second time today, even if it was not the regular kind of book work I have been doing.

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