One Journey Completed

On July 21st, I typed The End on my book, Journey of a Broken Writer. Y'all, I'm silly. The editing was an emotional journey, too. I cried for so many reasons. I learned more about myself, my life, and writing in the editing process than I had expected. 

I couldn't afford to hire a professional editor, and even if I could have, the process likely would have taken much longer than the two weeks I spent working through the manuscript with AI.

Don't think for one minute that it was easy. The AI didn't "fix" things. It flagged potential issues chapter by chapter. I reviewed each one, decided whether I agreed, revised the manuscript myself, and moved to the next chapter.

"Surely it couldn't have been that hard if you used AI to assist?" 

You would be incorrect. This was what I can only call an Editorial Event. And it took multiple sessions. In fact, I think that's what I'll call this from now on. I have three more books to edit.

Below is a breakdown of what each editorial pass examined. 

Structural Editing — Does the book work?

Developmental Editing — Does each chapter work?

Line Editing — Does each paragraph work?

Copy Editing — Is the manuscript technically clean?

Publication Editing — Is it ready for readers?

Thematic Analysis — What is the book really about?

Author Reflection — What does the book reveal about its author?

AI didn't just give me a list of things to fix. It reviewed every chapter through seven different editorial passes. I reviewed the findings, made the corrections, and asked for the next chapter. The work contains 62 chapters. This took days. Long, tiring days that left my neck, back, and butt aching and the rest of me exhausted. By the fifth pass, I wondered what else had to be checked. Couldn't I stop there? No, I needed all of them. 

And I especially needed that last pass. 

The revelations from that pass were encouraging and heartbreaking. It didn't just read my book. It read me. Those words won't be in the book. And that is where I put The End and cried. 

Oh, maybe that sounds silly to you. It does to me when I reread it. But you don't know what it took for me to arrive at this spot. You can't know what I had to do to write Journey of a Broken Writer. 

I don't know if anyone will buy or read this book. I wrote it to encourage other writers who have experienced discouragement at some point. By the end of this editorial journey, I understood I was writing it for someone else. I wrote for a 15-year-old girl who had seen her dreams crushed. 

I wish I could go back and tell her they were mistaken, that she had been a writer all along. I can't. So, I think I'll write another book.