(Dianne) Fox Writes

It’s been a busy couple months! If you watch my Twitter feed, you already know something about that.

Anah and I have been hard at work on edits, FLEs, and galley proofs (as well as blurb forms, cover forms, and author bio forms) for our novel Tatterdemalion, which will be coming out from Samhain in May. I’m loving every minute of it.

I love the whole process of taking a story and making it better. I love finding the mistakes and fixing them, making sure that the final product is as close to perfect as it can get. I love learning things I didn’t know before (like that I perpetually misspell both “mantel” and “straitjacket”, even after I’ve just been corrected on them, because muscle memory tells my fingers that’s how those words are typed).

I’m a very goal-oriented person, and I rely heavily on measurable results, so every time I add new words and phrases to my “Worry Words” list that I’ll use to edit future manuscripts, I get a great feeling of satisfaction that I’ve already achieved something, already learned something important from this process. That’s really exciting for me.

In the next few days, I’ll be making a post about the project timeline, too. You can see how long it REALLY takes for a story to get from concept to publication. (Answer: A lot longer than you think!)