Hope you’re doing well. It’s been a busy time around here, but busy is good. I got my first edit back from book 1 on Friday. I went over the reviews and sent them back. I have two more edits to go. The goal is to get it published this month… hopefully that will work out. I did find out some pretty cool editing notes, I’ll share with you below. I’ve also been hard at work on book 4. I’m about 60,000 words in it. That should be done this month. I also finished the first bit of editing on book 2. Are you confused yet. Here’s what I do.

Write the book – when I write, I go full tilt. If I don’t know something I just highlight it and put a whole bunch of ?? in the text. I read it and clear up the ?? this is my first run through. I then run through it again and correct grammar mistakes, and make sure the hero doesn’t have a burr cut on page one, and long blond locks at the end. I then send it to the editor. She checks it mostly for errors in the framework of the story, and let’s me know if I missed anything that I should have put there. She sends it back to me, I make edits and then it goes back for the final line edits.

Some people after they write, they then only work on editing. I don’t do that. I’m not sure exactly why I don’t maybe I’m afraid my story will go away. So while I’m doing any of the above I will make sure I write my 3500 words a day (at least). I want to write a novel every month, and I’ve told you before I want to write a million words this year. A lofty goal I know, but if you break it down into x number of words a day, it’s not so bad.

It’s not like it’s a chore either, I really love to write, I can usually write the 3500 words in a couple of hours.  Speaking of words and to keep me honest, here are the word counts since we talked last.

Friday – 3566
Saturday – 3607
Sunday – 3531
Monday – 3577
Tuesday – 3628
Weds – 3548

Here were some edit notes I got from my editor – hopefully you can use these tips as well.

Ok, capital letters regarding Mom/Dad etc.

If it is a proper noun, it needs capital letters. If it’s not, it doesn’t. The best way I saw someone explain when to use them and when to not is to substitute the name (Mom/Dad) for a Christian name, eg. Mel/Don

Eg. ‘He had spent the night with his Don’  – this doesn’t make sense, so it shouldn’t be capital letters.

‘He had spent the night with Don’ does make sense so this would be a capital for Grandpa.

So there you have it, a real easy way to tell when to capitalize Dad and Mom.