The Weekly Smile for the 11th of January, 2021 #weeklysmile

41 Replies

My smile this week is a little odd, though I have done similar ones in the past. It is editing.

If you have read my blog for any length of time, you may have seen that I have been just on the verge of having my book The Old Mill ready to be publish for almost two years! Nothing else that I have put out has been quite as difficult or painful to get together.

Slight history – I wrote the book in the winter and spring of 2017. It shared some themes with The Halley Branch, which I was just preparing for publication at the time, so I pushed it back. I finally got to it in January of 2019 and figured I’d be set by August (typical time if I work hard). By June I had pushed it back to early November. In September I started putting out preliminary marketing posts, but in October pushed it back to January of 2020. In January of 2020, I was sure it would be complete by July, 2020. And then it was supposed to be ready by late October. Yes, two and a half months ago. Sigh. I have no idea why it has been so difficult.

In late 2020 I sent off a final draft to two people who edit for me.

And yesterday I have finally finished going through all of their corrections and recommendations. There were pages of notes, edited copies, phone calls, etc. But I finally got through them all.

So it is very possible I am reaching the end. I want to do one more out-loud read-through, from beginning to end, just to catch any of the obvious mistakes the three of us missed, but that is it for editing. And then it will be the start of the formatting. I hate formatting, but the light is at the end of the tunnel. And all drafting and editing will be done.

That is my Smile for the week, finally, after years, getting to and end point on The Old Mill.

What made you smile?

****

Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week.  Why don’t you share it?  I hope you can join in!

Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas.  If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity.  Don’t smile about the misfortune of others.  Don’t smile in a way to excludes others.  Make sure a 12 year old can read it.

To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile.  Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one) (Note – pingbacks have been very inconsistent – please leave a comment :) ).   You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me).   Next week I will compile all of the Smiles and do a separate post of them on Monday morning just before the smile.  (I will shoot for around 7 AM EST).

41 thoughts on “The Weekly Smile for the 11th of January, 2021 #weeklysmile”

  1. Pingback: happy place, happy space: comfort of art – All things bright and beautiful

  2. Pingback: The Weekly Smile Recap for 1/11 – 1/17/2021 | Trent's World (the Blog)

  3. Pingback: happy place, happy space: Church – All things bright and beautiful

  4. Pingback: Escape to the lake side | Change Is Hard

  6. Pingback: The Weekly Smile and Virtual Afternoon Tea – Ladyleemanila

      2. Prior...

        Hi T –
        not sure whee we left off, but I found little dorrit on the Gutenberg free lists and they have a kindle version
        http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/963

        how about if we both mention it to readers and invite others to join us to post about this book – or any other work of his on June 14th of this year (I know some celebrate his day in Feb but many celebrate the day of his passing in June) – just an idea

        let me know what you think – and folks can share any way they want while you and i share notes specifically on Little Dorrit ??

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply ↓
        1. trentpmcd Post author

          OK, how about this – on February 7 we announce the Dickens “Challenge”. We can recommend Little Dorrit but let them do whatever they want. The two of us will share our thoughts on Little Dorrit and create a “share” for the event. One thing – I just Googled Dickens and it shows his date of death as June 9. Is there something else about the 14th, or should we aim for the 9th? Oh, another Google – in the last few years there have been Dickens festivals someplace between the 9th and the 14th, most of them on the 14th. I wonder if it is because the 14th was the closest weekend day?

          Anyway, I’m sure we’ll work it out.

          My copy hasn’t arrived yet, but I expect it early next week. I haven’t had time anyway, so…

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply ↓
          1. Prior...

            Hm
            Yes – I am glad we are not rushing to share about it by February – wood rush me a little
            And not sure why the 14th? That was their first date I found when writing you real quick –
            So we can shoot any date you want –
            ☀️📚

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply ↓

  8. Pingback: Tea Party & Weekly Smile (#Squareup Day 15) – priorhouse blog

  9. Monika Ohson | TravelerInMe

    Finally! Congratulations Trent :)

    I always feel the right frame of mind is needed to do such things besides time, hard work and perseverance. Procrastination does happen but like they say all is well that ends well, right.

    I am sure your hard work and of all those who helped you in this journey will pay off well. Wishing you the very best for the book Trent.

    My reason to smile? ….. Raptors https://travelerinmeblog.wordpress.com/2021/01/13/raptors/

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  11. Pingback: The Weekly Smile for the 11th of January, 2021 #weeklysmile – Tessa Dean – Author

  14. Pingback: January Colouring in: Take II – Ruth Blogs Here

  15. dprastka

    Great smile post! I know how you’ve been working on it as I’ve followed along this journey for awhile. I love hearing about the process you prolific writers go through, it does sound and I’m sure is a lot of hard work. I didn’t know authors like to read out loud their work, that’s very interesting and I can see how that is an important step for flow and word usage. Anyways, you are almost there and you should celebrate when you are done! 🎉🥳

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓
    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Thanks. Yes, it is a lot of hard work, but it is also satisfying to see it take shape. OK, parts of it are very frustrating when it is happening, but… ;) There are a lot of bloggers out there that write and I picked up the reading out loud thing from someone pretty early. The first time I tried it, I found literally hundreds of typos that I had missed earlier.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓
    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Thanks. Reading out loud does a lot of things. One, is that it forces me to actually look at each word – it is odd how I will see a word 10,000 and not realize it is wrong! It also helps me to ensure that there is that flow. That is something that is hard to catch reading in my head. But it is a good exercise :)

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓
  20. Frank @ Beach Walk Reflections

    Congratulations for one more step on your publishing journey. Cheers to you for not giving up. What made me smile? Well, as we know, last week was a challenge in America. For me, as I watched both sides having knots in their shorts, I smiled a myself for staying calm while clearly seeing what was happening.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Thanks. It is nice to be a step closer. I’m not sure why this one has been so difficult. It is always good to keep your head/cool while everyone is losing theirs. It was pretty stressful for a lot of us. One problem is that I am a news junkie and read 8 different sources, so seeing it from 8 different viewpoints hasn’t helped…. One reason I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible doing things like editing ;)

      Like

      Reply ↓

  21. Pingback: Weekly Smile – (3TC #447) – Laura McHarrie @ The Hidden Edge

  22. Pingback: Welcome | Two in One – Natalie the Explorer

  23. Natalie

    Well done, Trent. Editing takes focus and time. Even though the process has taken so long, you’re making progress. That’s an achievement in itself, especially when the outside world is volatile and distracting.

    My smile this week is from me hosting the Weekend Coffee Share blog party for the first time. It was well-attended with lots of interesting blogs to read. Here it is:
    https://natalietheexplorer.home.blog/2021/01/08/welcome-two-in-one/

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓
    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Thanks, Natalie. Although the rough draft stories I post aren’t bad, it is amazing the difference all of that drafting and editing does. The progress doesn’t have the same immediate appeal of the large scale changes when first writing, but they are just as important.
      And thanks for hosting the coffee share! It was a great success :)

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

Express Yourself

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s