After after "The End"

Anyone who's tried to write a novel, and especially anyone who's joined a critique group, knows that writing those two little words "The End" is a very long way from being the end.

After "The End", there's endless rounds of editing and polishing, revising and editing again, which is likely to take you several times longer than writing the actual story.

But eventually you finish up with a story that you are happy with. Typo-free, grammar-perfect, every word in its place, every paragraph sings.

It's ready.

But what about after that?

Once you get past that shedload of work after "The End" there's yet another whole after world of strangeness and hard graft waiting for you.

Now that I've chosen to go it alone, and getting close to putting something out there for real, I wanted to share some of the things I've learned through this part of the process.

I'm not trying to give advice! Let's be clear about that one point. Apart from the small matter of who the heck do I think I am to be giving anyone advice, seeing as I'm not even published yet, and it might all fall flat on its face and you'd be better off not listening to me, there's also the oft-repeated idea that everyone's writing journey is different. What works (or not, let's wait and see) for me may not be right for you.

So, I'm not giving advice. All I'm setting out to do is describe some parts of the journey, why they have been important to me, and what I've learned along the way.

To save you some mental indigestion, I'm planning to break this up into a series of posts over the coming weeks. And if you want me to touch on any aspect in particular, please feel free to ask questions in the comments and I'll do my best to respond in future posts.