The Writing of Elena's Table Enters a New Stage - This is getting real!

Thank you. There are so many nuances to publishing. In fact, I had somebody who was very insulting to me with my very first book and made a comment when I was not in the room that anyone who self-publishes is not actually an author. And I was really offended by that because I thought, first of all, how ignorant.

Second of all, if you understood the publishing world, you understand it's just a business model. And that doesn't mean that if your book doesn't get picked up that you don't have, you know, valuable content. Hello, everybody. Michael Sherlock here.

It has been a hot minute. I can't even believe I use that term, a hot minute, since I last had a recording talking about my novel, Elena's Table. And so I figured I'd better give you some updates to find out what's going on. I think the last recording I had was like the 10th or 11th of September.

And right after that last recording, two things happened. Number one is I took myself on a getaway weekend for writing, got myself a little studio-sized condo for a few days in Galveston, Texas, overlooking the Gulf. And I took beach walks, and I did a lot of writing. For the days I was going to be gone, I was hoping to even just write 500 words.

And what I wrote was about 15,000 words, which actually got me to near the full final length of the novel, with about 10,000 to 15,000 words to go, depending on you know, what happened. So after that, I had my very first meeting with my, hopefully at that time, my editor. So a gentleman that I was looking to hire. And so we had our first meeting and I had sent him about 20 pages of the book.

And he, it just was such a great meeting. We had such a wonderful connection So I decided to proceed and move forward with hiring him as my editor So we had our very first meeting just a couple weeks ago less than two weeks ago And in between there, by the end of September, and by the time I met with him, I think on the 16th of October, I had to just send him everything. Like I sent him the entire book, everything I'd written, all the mistakes in there, all the highlights, all the little notes that I added here and there, and just sent it to him.

And then when we met, and I didn't work on the novel at all during those couple weeks, which was really good because what it did for me is it got me into marketing mode. So I started thinking about how to market the book, what I really want to do. I started asking myself questions like, do I want to self-publish? Do I want to do a hybrid publishing?

Do I want to seek an agent for this and have a traditional publishing house? So lots of decisions still to be made. But during that time, I got a lot of really quality work done on just thinking about not the writing of the book. So my meeting with him on the 16th was fantastic.

And I'm so thankful that I taped the entire, recorded the whole session with him. Because as I started listening to him and starting taking notes, I had this moment of, I can't write fast enough to take all these notes. And then my brain said, well, Sherlock, you're already recording this. So just be here.

Just be fully present. And I was, and it was marvelous. So a couple of the highlights. First, he asked me how I'd feel.

Well, he didn't, this is not in order. But one of the things that was, that came out of this really clearly, as he said, I'd like you to actually scrap the first 12 pages of the book. And he asked me before that, you know, he was asking me, you know, like how I take feedback and things. And he said, you know, if I, for instance, said, what if I asked you to just scrap the first 12 pages of the book?

And I went, okay, why? And, you know, he gave me some great reasons, totally understood them, made complete sense, especially as we went through our meeting together. And so I was like, okay. So basically, he said I needed to introduce Maria differently.

And I needed to actually not make her so evolved at the beginning of the book. She needed to be less evolved. She needed to have a different kind of arc to go through. She needed to struggle a little bit more in areas.

And so his whole point of the first 12 pages is where I kind of did 12 pages give Maria whole life And I was learning that I telling not showing And it making me wonder about how much farther along I might be if I actually took writing lessons after college because I did a lot in high school and college with, you know, writing courses. But now it's all, you know, it's all new to me now. And he gave some incredible feedback. He gave me this compliment that it was so wonderful.

He said, you know, the way you describe food in this book, you could be a food writer and I would read everything you write about food. And he said, I want food to play even a more prominent role than you have it playing now. And he's like, I've been to Greece and either way you were describing the food, I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to go eat there. So that was really fun.

I think overall, his feedback was so incredibly helpful and powerful. And so this is what happens from now. People keep saying, well, what's going on with the book? How's the book going?

When is the book going to be out? I don't know when the book's going to be out, but I guarantee you this. Well, I guess I shouldn't say I guarantee. I'll tell you what I'm planning.

I'm planning to have the book fully completed by June of 2026. And what do I mean by that? I mean that either I have self-published it by then or, you know, near the tail end of it, or I've decided to go in search of an agent and am already in the process. And over the next few months, I'm going to make that decision.

But I'm going to move forward as if I'm either self-publishing or doing a hybrid publishing mode. And I'm going to work under that assumption so that everything I start to do with the marketing and the branding of the book starts to really play to that. And then that way, if I choose to get an agent, then I've already got a lot of things in motion, which makes me a more attractive author to a publishing house. There are so many nuances to publishing.

And I think that a lot of times people, in fact, I had somebody who was very insulting to me with my very first book and made a comment when I was not in the room that anyone who self-publishes is not actually an author. And I was really offended by that because I thought, first of all, how ignorant. Second of all, if you understood the publishing world, you understand it's just a business model. And that doesn't mean that if your book doesn't get picked up that you don't have valuable content.

But I do know that self or publishing through hybrid model where you pay for editing like I doing where you might pay for somebody to do the cover design You pay for somebody to do the layout You pay for somebody actually to set it up and get it ready to go And there might be things I do myself in there too. But making that decision to move forward as if I'm going to do this in a hybrid or self-publishing model is really important to me because then that moves the book towards completion.

So now that I've gotten to this next point, just let me tell you about what happens from here on out. So today was my first day back at rewriting and working on the intro to the book again. And I was nervous about it. In fact, I was kind of afraid.

I was afraid I wasn't going to know what to say or what to write because I've done so much. And so I just put a timer on for 30 minutes and I just started writing. And he actually gave me the greatest line for the beginning of the book, which I think is so funny. He's like, You don't have to use this, but if you do, and here's the line, her eyelashes came unglued at the Christmas party and so did everything else.

And so that's my new first line in the book for now. I may play with it just a little bit, but I love what he's doing is how we're setting up, jumping forward about 12, 15 pages into the book to start the book at a different place and from Maria in a different place. So starting from here on out, I'm going to be writing every day. The next stage is mid-November.

I have my next meeting with him where we will dive deep in just the first 10,000 words. And we're going to do this 10,000 words at a time until the book is done and until I, you know, have something to really go off of. But we're moving forward. I am so appreciative of everybody who's following along, everybody who's curious about what's going on with the process.

And I'm just having a whole lot of fun. So let's see where this goes. And yeah, we'll go from there. Have a great day.

Thank you.