books-books I retired from banking and decided to write a book. Now this wasn’t as sudden as it seems, because this idea had been floating around in my head for several years. So I sat down and wrote a story line and then started the book. Dialog posed a problem until I figured out that you talk to yourself, then answer yourself, then write it down. Soon, you have a whole conversation flowing across the page. 

I was writing away and about half way through the story when I noticed a course on “Writing a Book” given at the local college. Now I didn’t know this at the time, but the person teaching the course had never written a book. He had a book in progress and was about half way through. (Sound familiar?)  He said he had been working on it for about five years and would be ready to submit in about five more years. It immediately occurred to me that if it took me that long, I could be dead before I finished. The course was in the college’s adult education series and did not cost much, but then, it did not teach me much. 

On finishing the book, I started thinking about an editor. I talked to a friend who taught English on the college level and asked her to read a few chapters then tell me what she thought. (A retired person can not afford to pay an editor!) Needless to say, that didn’t work out at all. She wanted to change all my sentences to proper english, not considering most people don’t speak proper English. (At least I don’t talk to myself in proper english.) It was time for another idea and I found it in my daughter. Here was someone who had inherited my love of books and reading. She made excellent grades, when she bothered to turn in her homework, and would work for free. Perfect! 

Now I don’t consider myself a lucky person, but this time I got lucky. My “New Editor” loved to research and she found out what I needed to do in order to submit my book. In short order she had corrected the manuscript, made sure the sentiences were written in the correct tense and had it formatted for a publisher to read. 

Now all I had to do was find a publisher! (Watch for Part 2 – How to Find a Publisher?)

Happy reading, Linda