Melissa Grant Writes

Maybe it’s just me, but writing a book is kind of making me feel like Sisyphus, rolling his boulder up the hill, only to have it – well, you know the story.

I know, I know I’m being very dramatic comparing myself to a mythological Greek king, but have we met?

Do you remember being a kid, having tasks, doing them and being done? I think one of the suckiest parts of adulting is NEVER being done.

This task was starting to feel eternal.

After my first round of major edits, I had a moment of elation and emailed Tiffiny saying, “Holy shit (pardon me), I just finished my major edits. Now what do I do?”

First, to her credit, she told me to take a break.

Then she told me what was next. Arg.

A query letter with comparative titles, a summary, and a bio.

A synopsis.

And I should start thinking about how I would market my book.

Ok, what exactly do publishers actually do these days? Movies and books had apparently given me a completely WRONG picture of how this whole process would go.

I had this very stupid idea that I would write it, send it off to some office that would then suggest changes, I’d make them and BOOM, I was an author.

Adorable.

Before this whole conversation even started, I had sent her the first two chapters for a line edit, as those would be the ones sent with my query letter and should be as polished and perfect as possible.

Those two were likely the MOST-touched-on and gone-over chapters in the entire book.

While she worked on those, I started my bio and sent that off.

I should have listened to her advice and taken a break.

She was encouraging about my bio and sent tips for the query letter.

Then sent another email about the first two chapters and suggested a MAJOR restructure.

My first reply was:

“It feels like another developmental edit, and I want to cry.”

And the next:

“I want to set everything on fire.”

To her credit, she was calm. You must have to have an extraordinarily serene personality to work with neurotic authors. She must have heard my panic and tried to make time in her schedule right away to hop on Zoom with me, even though she had her own heavy stuff going on.

Stupid adulting.

I wanted to stop. I didn’t want to do it anymore.

For about an hour.

That’s the thing about me: I explode with panic immediately, freak out, stomp around, look completely crazy and then calm down almost as fast.

I scheduled the Zoom call for a time that was actually convenient for her (don’t be selfish, Melissa) and then got to work doing the restructure. I pulled the two chapters out of the manuscript, convinced she was WRONG and that I would hate her suggestions.

She wasn’t wrong.

Pfft.

After the Zoom call and Tiffiny’s reassurances that the entire book wouldn’t be a repeat of the first two chapters and that I didn’t need to line-edit the entire thing, I took the next step.

I walked to the bottom of the hill, hit ‘Read Aloud,’ and started pushing my boulder again.