Muddling By – Fifth Draft Finished

A fifth draft? Whew. And done soon. The fourth draft was done less than a month ago. Ready to publish, right? Not right. But progress is being made.

The fifth draft of Muddling By is done. And yet, what I intended to do isn’t done. Every draft hopefully pulls a manuscript one bit closer to publication. Good. Done. But Muddling By (really from Middle Class to Millionaire to Muddling By) has conflicting influences. One: Describe America’s wealth classes, or at least my journey through them. Two: Publish the book while America, really just the United States, becomes the Untied States. Balance that.

Oh yeah, and remember to make time for the final book in my scifi series (Firewatcher, Fire Race, ?), and push along the screenplay about a 14-year-old boy’s real-life journey on a tall ship in 1876. 

OK. OK. I’ll finish this book this year. I’m 66 and not making many assumptions about how many years and books are available to me.

Ideally, Muddling By would be belabored for years as I honed each word, rewrote entire sections, and researched more elements of the story of riding through America’s wealth classes. Plan on years.

If I publish Muddling By this year, then I should really finish it in time for the holiday season, say, Thanksgiving. In that case, give me a month for formatting the interior and exterior. So, Halloween? That suggests the words are done by the end of September. Which leaves what’s left of July, all of August, and September to fix and polish the manuscript. Get busy, dude.

What I have now is five drafts, each an improvement. Whether that’s enough will be determined by the calendar. Maybe the fifth draft is good enough. I already have a long series of notes to fix, and a long series of themes to reconcile. How many readers are going to read from the first page to the last versus how many are going to read randomly? A bit of repetition might be handy. OK. Gotta do that sixth draft.

Beyond that, however, I can identify a different tone that might be more engaging. That edit would be substantial. Maybe I could scram that into the rest of this year. Maybe not. Maybe I’m overthinking this.

Welcome to an author’s dilemma. 

I don’t know the future. No one does, though they may delude themselves into thinking they do. If the US goes from United to Untied, then I should release this book now, or at least very soon. If the US remains integral, then maybe my book doesn’t matter. Hmm. Did I just talk myself into abandoning any major revision?

Yep, though I suspect my subconscious got there first.

So goes the machinations in an author’s mind. Social media posts are effectively instantaneous. Think it. Type it. Maybe edit it. Publish it. Books take longer and are driven by the calendar rather than the clock.

As usual, I’ll take a bit of a break between the drafts. My brain just thanked me for that.

I’d hoped to finish in six drafts. I see a few more, but none that require the full read of the manuscript that the first five did. Maybe one last one. Maybe. The next draft will be to incorporate my listed edits. Then, formatting. Hmm. Cover design. (I have a sketch, but a sketch is not a design.) Then, putting it all together, read it again, and expect to edit for formatting to get it into and through Amazon/kdp’s process. 

Books are more than words. Sure, words matter. They’re most of the matter, but titles, covers, and marketing materials take time, too. I’m getting better at those things, but also aware enough to make sure I have enough time to work on each. 

Stay tuned. I’m getting there.