Now that I’ve finished my novel, I’m thinking about what happens next. Today is the first day in 21 days when I haven’t written at least a page of text. It’s kind of weird. Not sure I like it.
My novel writing experience has been good enough that I will consider editing my novel and seeing what happens with it. I don’t really know anything about the world of novel publishing, but I’d love to see if mine has what it takes. Eventually I’ll solicit feedback from everyone who’s read the thing and see what I can do with it. I’m not expecting miracles, not expecting much really, but it seems worth a try. That kind of hardcore editing probably won’t happen right away.
Immediately, though, I am considering doing a cheap form of self-publishing through Cafepress. It’s basically print-on-demand, and would enable me to put my novel in quasi-professional paperback format for around $15 per copy. Yes, it does seem a bit pretentious, but hey, it’s my first novel. I’m allowed to be pretentious. I could also make these rough draft versions available to the public, though that would strictly be for those who want to curl up and read my novel but find a laptop to be a bit cold and sterile.
Such a self-publishing venture would probably require a small bit of editing (can’t let all those typos and missed words get through, can we?). There’s a few scenes I’m not happy with (or at least embarrassed enough to want to change for a rough draft printing) so I might spend the remaining days of November fine-tuning the draft. It wouldn’t be a real editing job, but enough to iron out the wrinkles and not thorougly embarrass myself if I find this paperback 20 years from now.
It would also require designing a cover. The image at the top right is a potential design I whipped up tonight. I could spend weeks perfecting a cover design and still not be happy, so I’ll probably end up settling for something. And I doubt Cafepress’s printing is anything worth getting excited about, so it’s probably not worth hours and hours of design time.
Basically a self-publishing deal would fulfill that tiny, prideful spark inside that wants to see my name on the cover of a book. After all, publishing is shit. I’m just happy I made it.
And what comes next? I don’t know. I definitely think I should write more. I should definitely do this novel in a month thing again, and I might not want to wait a year.
In the meantime I’ll be reading the adventures of Charlie Parker.