The Kings of One Color Coming Soon

I just finished the initial round of editing for my new book, The Kings of One Color. It is a strange experience finishing a book.

This is the fifth time I have completed a book, but the feeling of finality is like nothing else I've ever done. I think the idea that writing a book is such an exhaustive activity that once you are done... You are done!

The combined days writing the book is probably somewhere around 60 days, but during those sixty days I am writing somewhere from one to three hours and spending time in the car, lunch breaks, evenings, nights lying awake in bed, and of course dreams thinking about the story. I don't think it is fair to think that sixty days of writing at an average of two hours a day is really what gets a book written. That would mean I could pump out a book every 120 hours. If I could write full time I could pump one out every three weeks! No, I can't.

I would suggest I spend somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hours a day either writing or thinking about the story. Developing the story and characters and coming up with directions and twists... So, a book takes me somewhere close to 500 hours to write a book. Then we have another 20 days or so of editing which takes maybe three to four hours a day of reading and rewriting. But, then there is also the three to four hours of re-outlining the plot and characters and storylines to try and make sure I am catching the inconsistencies. So, lets add another 200 hours or so in the cleanup phase.

There is also the cover art, the synopsis, the hook, the printing, the attempts at marketing... In the end giving it the idea of a forty hour work week, all in all a book takes me somewhere close to four months to complete, working on it pretty constantly.

The point of all this is that once I finish the project I really want to get it out there and stop thinking about it!