I’m Kristen Tate—editor, writer, and proprietor of the Blue Garret. I’m currently chronicling the process of revising and self-publishing my next book in these subscriber-only newsletters. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of this email. Thanks for joining me at the garret!

It is week thirty-two of 2024. How’s the writing going for you these days? I’m very aware of the different vibes in the northern and southern hemispheres right now because my son is already back in Sydney for his second semester after a winter break in our San Francisco summer (which, it turns out, has almost the same temperature range as a Sydney winter, just with a lot more daylight). So if you are dragging through the dog days of summer in the northern hemisphere, wishing you could get to that fall energy faster, pull up some content from southern-hemisphere creators (like former Bay Area–based author Rachael Herron, now based in New Zealand, or my wonderful client Giselle Stein) and see if it will get you there.

The garret at the moment is an airplane somewhere over Lake Erie as I’m kicking off a family vacation in New York City, Washington, DC, and then a swing further south to visit family. (If you have restaurant or other recs for me in either city, send them my way!)

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of taking an imaginary trip to a wintry Yosemite Valley and dreaming about #vanlife, thanks to a witty, warm-hearted rom-com I was copyediting—watch for the pub day announcement on my Instagram if this sounds like the cozy vibe you need this fall.

And I’ve spent every spare hour working away at Novel Study, now adding all of the final little bits and pieces and moving into production mode. Let’s look at my stats:

August 3 snapshot

⏱️ 170 hours to date

☑️ 143 to-do list items

✅ 76 to-do items completed

📑 Draft #6: 0/266 pages

Previous installments: Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 7, Week 8, Week 10, Week 12, Week 14, Week 22, Week 26, Week 28, Week 30

I’m laughing as I write this because the stats show me almost standing still, even though I feel I made a lot of progress. I completed ten to-do items and… added ten more things to the list. I haven’t made any official progress through Draft 6, but it has somehow gained five more pages. Sometimes the stats don’t reflect what you know about your book!

I know that Draft 6 now has an expanded conclusion based on helpful feedback from my beta readers that my long, long, long list of questions was intimidating. The goal of the conclusion is to encourage readers to conduct their own novel studies, on books that are important comps for their work, so it was worth spending some time making the process more approachable and customizable. I also added all of those little pieces you don’t think about until the end—a dedication, a new author bio, a “call to action” page (usually, for writers, a request to sign up for a mailing list and/or leave a review—plus all of those little pieces I skipped over because they were a pain in the ass and slowed me down from writing (I’m looking at you, correctly styled footnotes).

The other big piece I accomplished was to put together a cover design brief and a list of comp titles, both for my designer and also for myself. It’s worth taking some time identifying your comp (or “comparative”) titles because these are the books that your book will hopefully be in conversation with or share a shelf with. It’s important to look at the covers to know what’s usual for your genre, and it’s also a chance to see what categories you should be investigating and get a range of typical prices for your genre. Self-publishers essentially put on their marketing hat at this stage in the game and do some good old market research that will help inform all of the next stages of production, selling, and marketing.

The last thing I did on the book this week was to go through all of my remaining to-do lists (editing, production, selling, and marketing) and come up with a time estimate for each list so I could set a reasonable publication date—and so I could reassure myself that I shouldn’t keep knocking off to-do list items during my vacation.

I’m estimating that I have about another 75 hours of work, and I’m aiming for a pub date around October 7. I’m as curious as you are to know whether this pans out! I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks, maybe with some trip photos and perhaps reporting on just a tiny handful of to-do items completed on the plane ride back home.

Our Thing of Joy is a fascinating video about why New York’s Broadway cuts diagonally across the otherwise mostly tidy grid of Manhattan. I lived in New York for seven years before moving to San Francisco, and I can’t wait to be back in the world of fantastic bagels, live theater, fast walkers, and great cursers for a few days.

Stay well, y’all, and keep fighting the good fights.

Kristen

PS: Aaaand, one minute after I typed that subject line, the pilot came on to announce we are diverting to Pittsburgh. Universe, I didn’t mean it literally! I guess stay tuned for a possible travel high-jinks story next time. Let’s hope it’s a really boring one. 😬

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