What I Learned From Writing My First Book

 Last October, I released my first book Parallelia: The Tale of Two Dimensions last October and I can truly say the experience has taught me a lot. 

I used the Writing Into the Dark method, sometimes called pantsing, where I did not use outlines but just allowed my creative voice to mold the story as I went along. While doing the Writing Into the Dark method, you should be circling back every 400 words or so to self-edit. Creating a reverse outline really helps which I will do with my next book. Write down key facts, names, and important facts as you go along to reverse outline your novel. This helps with continuity errors and cuts down the time for developmental editing later on. I reached my goal of writing 60,000 words by a specific date and then the real work began. Editing for me was a horrible kind of chore, and after losing all my edits once due to a computer issue, I decided to publish with very minimal edits. What's the worst thing that can happen, right? (I'll get back to this later)

I chose a book cover from the Amazon stock art, so I didn't go out and find a cool cover design like many people do. Looking back, I think for my next book I will get a cover designer to make my next book pop. I've heard that you can find pretty good ones over at Fiverr

I got an ISBN number from Amazon but I've heard that you can go and buy one for yourself if you want to sell on places other than Amazon. I learned from Youtube author pages that Bowkers is the origin of ISBN barcodes, although there are lots of 3rd party websites out there. Will definitely be going through Bowkers my 2nd time around 'authoring'.

I marketed my book on the Facebook page for Enjoying the Journey and by word of mouth. Next time around, I plan to buy ads on Facebook and Google to increase traffic. 

Also, for my first book, I copywrited it, which I definitely recommend. This is so no one else can steal your intellectual property and claim it as their own. A very important step for around $50.

Now... Back to the editing. Editing is such a pain. Really, dude. Compared to the freedom-filled act of writing a novel (at least the way I do it) editing is the breaks. That's why I didn't do any to my first book and surely I do regret it. I see so many mistakes that could have been avoided when I re-read a printed copy of my book. Don't get me wrong, the storytelling aspect of my book is there. But if I had the patients, I would re-release it edited, and peer-reviewed--but for now I'm content to just say, "Oh, that? That was just my first book. It's a learning process."