My Current Project
Over the past year, I’ve been focused on writing a series of children’s chapter books, the My Everyday Series. They are all about the eldest daughter of Dutch immigrants to Canada. If you hadn’t guessed, they’re loosely based on my childhood. Most of the stories are true, but many details have been reimagined. As one does.
How I Began
This is the life of this author. First, I planned which stories would go into the book series. Since chapter books are a specific length and reading level, it was essential to divide the chapters into units of ten. Apparently, chapter books have ten chapters, each about ten pages long. Who knew? Next, it was time to flesh out the books, writing the stories in a way that would appeal to children. This was not difficult since I’ve told these stories for most of my life, first to my children and then to my grandchildren.
Editing
Editing: the bain of an author’s life. The problem is that what an author first writes is rarely good. I personally go through and make sure that the stories make sense and happen in a logical order. Then, I read the book out loud to find out if there are awkward sentences or things that require additional explanation or, well, you get the picture. After I’m satisfied, I solicit beta readers, who graciously read one book and give me feedback. There’s always stuff that needs improvement. So, I read what they sent me, put the book down for a few days (since they were criticizing my baby!), and then made the changes they suggested. I often find that the general principles apply to all the books in the series, so I edit them all.
And then? I edit some more. I read the books aloud, find more issues, fix them, and so on. Finally, I run the books through an online editor like Grammarly to find minor things, like punctuation errors.
Making It Pretty
While doing all of the above, I also chose illustrations and photographs, making sure they were not copyrighted to someone else. After running them through Canva, they went into the books. I also wrote the back cover matter and then worked with my fabulous cover designer, GraphixMunna, who I found through Freelancer, to design covers for the entire series. They look great!
Next, I entered the metadata into Bowker and Ingram Spark (yes, both sites need it) and bought bar codes. Finally, the great day arrived. I uploaded the first book. Ingram Spark shot it back as having problems. We fixed those and tried again. Then, the process was repeated for each book, sometimes multiple times. Ingram Spark is very particular!
It’s Done–well, almost
Finally, I was done. The four books are now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and almost all online book retailers worldwide. So exciting! But then, I decided the series needs a mega-book containing all four books. Back to the drawing board. Believe it or not, I do this for fun!