The first draft of the book was finished yesterday. Today I’ve exported it from Scrivener to Word in readiness for the Editor to cast her accomplished eye over the document.
It was interesting to see a quote the other day from Simon Sinek. He said, “Arrogance is thinking something is perfect after the first draft. Humility is knowing that there is always room for improvement.”
That put the brakes on for me as I do tend to write something once and send it out. At least this time I had organised an editor.
The book has ended up, at this stage, at 20,000 words plus a few. Quite frankly I’m amazed at what I had in me, but the more I wrote, the more the ideas flowed. I found Scrivener a very useful tool to write the book because I was able to note ideas down as they came to me. I then went back and padded them out later and put them in the correct order.
The other thing that surprised me is how much I remembered when writing. At my age, memory lapses are common. With the book though, I found I was remembering processes and procedures from many years ago. I was also remembering incidents from the past where I had been involved in community organisations that leant themselves to useful anecdotes. Hopefully there inclusion will help others avoid pitfalls.
Now I’m about to email the draft to the editor. I’m excited and very pleased I’ve gotten to this stage.