Physical Book Feelings!

So recently I finished the first draft of my novel and put the story to bed for a little while to reset my thoughts on it.

I then did my first edit where I fixed a few loopholes in the plot, some discrepancies in continuity where I changed my mind about a character trait or some world building aspects later in the story.

I decided then I wanted to have a physical copy of my manuscript for the second edit so I could be away from the computer and sit elsewhere in the house when I go through it.

Yesterday the moment came where the book dropped and it was an amazing feeling! It’s A4 in manuscript form and a temporary cover, but still to feel the weight of it, smell the pages (weird I know) and have the tactile and tangible product of two years work was really something.

I started my edit with a pencil today, already I’m only 24 pages in and I’m picking up on silly and very basic mistakes that I completely missed by being glued to my computer monitor. It’s quite cathartic to edit it with a pencil on paper and I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

I’m glad I took this route to do an edit as it feels now more like a product as I said earlier that is actually tangible and I could achieve something with, I can then go back and furnish the word doc with the amendments to allow for another edit before my first alpha reader casts their eyes on it and I stand in judgement.