By now, I should be used to submitting my manuscript. And to a certain degree, I am. But this time, it’s the last time. It’s conclusive; the final time I will get a chance to review, edit, accept changes, and submit it to my publisher. This is one of the scariest moments in my self-publishing journey. I’m shaking in my square-toe sandals.

After the three-week edit, I sent off my manuscript for proofreading. When I got it back this week, there was this comment from my editor:

“Hi, Melina. You’ve done a fantastic job with the novel and it was in really great shape. Congrats!”

Okay, so that stopped my shaking a little bit. But I’m still nervous. After all, whatever I submit in the next week or so will be what people are actually going to be reading when my book gets released. I’m one strut closer to my book publishing! And being in the hands of readers; some who will love it and probably some that will despise it too.

Something interesting that I learned during the proofreading process is that you’re not allowed to use song lyrics in your book unless you get it cleared with the record label—or whoever is in charge of the song. I had no idea! Here I was quoting Ari Lennox and unwittingly setting myself up for a major lawsuit. Thankfully I’ve made this discovery because now I can edit out the Toni Braxton lyrics I used in my next novel…

Most of the edits made in the proofread were small stylistic changes. For example, changing jewellery to jewelry. Or omitting an abundance of parentheses and em dashes. I’m guilty as charged on all counts of em dash overuse. I love them, can’t get enough. I think my obsession stems from university when my professor told me that I used too many parentheses in my writing and I just replaced them with em dashes. Who knows?

I have two weeks to make any other changes, accept or reject the ones my editor made for me, and submitted my final manuscript. Next up, we’ll be designing the interior layout.

—ᴍᴍᴍ