something on every page

I nearly forgot to write my blog post this morning – I just got straight onto working on the book!

On Saturday I finally finished what I call my “first draft”. For anyone else writing a book, this would mean that the author had finished getting all the words out of their head and onto paper. It is relatively early in the book writing process. That’s not what *I* mean though.

Most authors write in a word processing program, and then the designer takes their words and puts them into the page layout. Because I am both the author and the designer, I write directly onto my page layout, in the design program that I use (QuarkXpress).

This means that my “first draft” includes all the words, photos, and diagrams (or at least an indication of what photos or diagrams are going to go where). If you’re familiar with my books, you’ll know that due to the step by step nature of the instructions, the text is completely intertwined with the pictures. Often, to make it fit, I need to massage the words and layout of pictures a lot to edit them into shape and make it work. So for me, a completed “first draft” means there is something on EVERY page, but it will already have undergone a significant editing process to get to that stage.

I took a long time to complete my first draft because there were some pages that were completely empty until Saturday. As soon as they were done, it felt a little more finished.

I went to my local office supplies place and got them to print it all out for me (much quicker than troubling my poor little laser printer with it!). I finally held some semblance of this book in my hands for the first time. Wow!

It has now been handed over to my proofreader for checking. My husband is my proofreader. He is very meticulous, likes words, yet knows very little about embroidery, so he comes to the work with a fresh, non-understanding brain. If he can understand the instructions, a stitcher should certainly be able to! If he can’t, then I need to make it so that he can.

Thankfully, he hasn’t found huge amounts that need significant work. Mostly it is just small changes. But it is a really important step, as he sees things that I don’t see, because I am over-familiar with it.

When he’s written all over it, I get the pages back again and work through the things he wants me to change. I get to decide what changes and what doesn’t. However, if he thinks something needs fixing, it probably does!

So that’s what I’m working on today. I will hopefully also find the time to go and get my pattern pages and the cover printed out, so that they can also be checked.