In Which I Cooperate for a Week
Jun. 16th, 2018 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aThis last week has been a busy one, because at the start of every work day, I sat down and did at least two hours of non-distracted editing on my and Chris' cooperative games book.
This is a book that's been in process for several years, but as of a few months ago, we finally picked up a contract for its publication. Yay, it's been a little hard to place. Everyone who's read it seems to love the content, but we weren't willing to sign off on a contract with an education publisher, because education book contracts are apparently horrible (something I didn't previously know), and it's been a bit hard in the larger world finding someone who's just the right audience.
But we have that publisher now, and we have a due date of July 1. So my plan was to spend about a week of May finalizing content, and then about a week of June editing and formatting content. May lagged a bit, but got done, but after my first week of June I learned that the editorial work was going to take longer than I thought.
This is good, honestly. I think I'm doing excellent editorial work, not just strengthening individual sentences (I've really learned how to cut out the fat in the last ten years or so), but also reorganizing sections and in one case a whole chapter, to make them flow better and show a better progression of ideas. The problem, of course is that this all takes pretty notable time, in a way that just adjusting word choice and fixing typos wouldn't.
So, the two hour a day pledge. But, that turned out to be pretty nice to. I was actually looking forward to the start of each work day, because I knew I'd get at least two hours on our book, and that I'd have 10-15 pages done by the end of it.
It's still not enough. Next week I'm going to continue with this, and the last week of the month I'm going to give the full work week to editorial.
And formatting, I suppose. I haven't quite figured out if I'm going to be able to make that part of the deadline.
But the co-op book progresses! I hope we'll have available for order this year!
This is a book that's been in process for several years, but as of a few months ago, we finally picked up a contract for its publication. Yay, it's been a little hard to place. Everyone who's read it seems to love the content, but we weren't willing to sign off on a contract with an education publisher, because education book contracts are apparently horrible (something I didn't previously know), and it's been a bit hard in the larger world finding someone who's just the right audience.
But we have that publisher now, and we have a due date of July 1. So my plan was to spend about a week of May finalizing content, and then about a week of June editing and formatting content. May lagged a bit, but got done, but after my first week of June I learned that the editorial work was going to take longer than I thought.
This is good, honestly. I think I'm doing excellent editorial work, not just strengthening individual sentences (I've really learned how to cut out the fat in the last ten years or so), but also reorganizing sections and in one case a whole chapter, to make them flow better and show a better progression of ideas. The problem, of course is that this all takes pretty notable time, in a way that just adjusting word choice and fixing typos wouldn't.
So, the two hour a day pledge. But, that turned out to be pretty nice to. I was actually looking forward to the start of each work day, because I knew I'd get at least two hours on our book, and that I'd have 10-15 pages done by the end of it.
It's still not enough. Next week I'm going to continue with this, and the last week of the month I'm going to give the full work week to editorial.
And formatting, I suppose. I haven't quite figured out if I'm going to be able to make that part of the deadline.
But the co-op book progresses! I hope we'll have available for order this year!