As I write this, the first book in the challenge has just gone live on Amazon! I'm sitting here in a coffee shop, completely dumbfounded as to how quickly this all turned around…
So, here's the breakdown of my processes for this first week in the challenge. These updates are more for me to keep a record of what I've done, so forgive me if they don't have the normal ‘flow' like my other blog posts normally do!
And I can't promise that I might wander off topic…
The Challenge Update: Write 7 Books in 7 Weeks
Day 1-Monday: I write better in the mornings, so my first task of the day was to get at least 2,000 words down within the space of an hour—an hour and a half, tops. I was able to do that fairly easily as I had already mind mapped and outlined this book over the weekend, prior to starting the challenge.
Monday's are never good writing days for me, typically because I have a lot of client work scheduled on that day. I had to figure out how to manage this because I knew that I'd need to get a good, solid effort done on the book, with the aim of writing at least the first half of the book on this day.
I have a very understanding husband!
From 9:30am-2:30pm was all client work. I can't tell you how frustrating I felt, knowing that I couldn't continue writing until after 2:30pm.
I was constantly haunted by the words that I wanted to write…
Once the client stuff was out of the way, I sat down and wrote until my husband got home… then I wrote some more. I finished up Day 1 at 9pm, having completed half of the book, some 7,000 words.
Day 2-Tuesday: Tuesday's are a little more flexible client-wise, so I was able to sit down in the morning and just write until I was done… and I was done by 10am, having started at 7am. I should point out here that I'm actually up at 5am. I do my Miracle Morning routine, exercise, shower etc, then start ‘work' at 7am.
When I sat and looked at my Scrivener screen at 10am, I actually couldn't quite believe that I'd finished! I thought to myself, “surely I've missed something!” But I hadn't. The main writing (first draft) was done.
Normally I would wait 24 hours before going through and doing a read-through and self-edit, but given my time constraints, I simply tackled this later in the day.
I sat down to do my self-edit around 3pm and was done by about 6pm.
I'd already been in touch with my editor and she was all geared up to receive the document in the morning…
Day 3-Wednesday: Before I started my Miracle Morning routine, I exported my book from Scrivener to Word and emailed it off to my editor. She had just over 11,800 words to edit. I told her that I wanted to publish the book by Friday (my time) and she assured me that she'd get it done.
My editor, Lisa, is based in the US, so being a day behind me was a little bit of a concern for me … I needn't have worried!
Lisa got the book, fully edited, back to my by the end of Wednesday my time. All that was left for me to do was add in the front and back matter (things like the title page, copyright, dedication etc and then in the back matter, about the author, review plea, list of books etc).
I also reached out to my amazing cover designer, Steve Windsor at this point. I had no idea what I wanted, other than that I wanted the covers to be branded and easily recognisable as being part of a series…
Steve ran with it and this is what he came up with. I LOVE IT! Wait till you see the rest of them…
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I hadn't planned on formatting the book on Day 3, but sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches. Again, I have a very understanding husband…
I sat down at 2pm and started copying and pasting the book back into Scrivener (I need an editor that can edit in Scrivener!!) and then started the formatting process. This took me a couple of hours to do, at most.
Day 4:-Thursday: 7am and I'm at my computer bugging Steve to get the cover sorted. We'd gone back and forth a few times late yesterday and he was presenting me with a final mock-up before buying the images. Did I mention that I love what he came up with?!
Once I got the cover through from Steve, I went through and compiled the book to .mobi format from Scrivener and used the Kindle Previewer to see how it would look on some different Kindle devices.
There were a couple of spacing issues with some of the headings, so I quickly fixed those then compiled it again. Success!
I uploaded the book at 6pm (my time), added descriptions, categories and keywords and it went live at about 1.30am my time (Friday).
Day 5-Friday: And this is where I'm at. Day 5 and my book is published, live and getting reviews already! My official launch of the first book will happen next week, but you're more than welcome to grab it now, while it's at it's sale price of $0.99!
The next update will come out the same time next week! Stay tuned to see how the second book goes… will it be as easy as the first? That's the question on everyone's lips…
Leave your thoughts and comments below—I'd love to know your thoughts on how I'm doing… Also, if you're doing a similar challenge, leave a comment below with what it is so we can share it with the world!
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