After a three-week break, I went back to my consulting job on August 3 and worked 17 days straight. That is until today when I got a little mini vacation – a few hours off to go out to lunch and get a much-needed manicure and pedicure. Tomorrow I’ll be back on the job for another 20 days or so until the work is finished.
I can’t tell how much I look forward to going back to my writing life and playing with all my writing friends out on the networks. I really apologize for being such a dropout these last few weeks and months. Once back I’ll probably get so involved again, you all will want me to get a work gig again.
However, while I’ve been working I looked at how similar writing a proposal is to writing a book. Right now a review team is looking at our product. That’s what I hope most of us do with our draft books:
- ask a team of fellow authors to review our book and give us comments
- pick our team carefully for their expertise
- give them a list of specific things to look at
- most important, ask them to give us honest comments and suggest ways to fix our product.
That’s exactly what’s happening right now on the proposal I’m working on. A group of reviewers are looking at our proposal book with fresh eyes, and when they are through, they’ll tell us what they think. Good and bad!
I feel so fortunate to be able to carry over my technical writing and proposal work to my creative writing work. The tools I’ve learned on the job have always served me well when I’m sitting in my home office writing my book and other writing stuff. Over and over I learn the importance of impartial and constructive reviews.
If you haven’t sent your book out for a review yet, I suggest you do. I know you’ll publish a much better book if you have some fresh eyes on your work first.
Please tell me your experiences working with reviewers. Did you like the experience? Did you get good constructive criticisms?
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