I’m glad to see the end of this week. Amen, TGIF…
For reading, I continued progress in IDW’s TMNT Vol. 8.
For data analysis, I received the proofreads back for Year of the Rat. Overall, a very strong effort and good editing results. I received one edit per 1500 words, which is three times better than my copy edit, which was one edit per 500 words. When you have a proofread, ideally you want to see fewer edits, and that was the case here.
Now I’m morbidly curious to know what my edits per would be AFTER proofreading. I’m going to hire a separate proofreader to proofread a small sample of the book, and then I will extrapolate the results. This will check my proofreader’s work but also tell me what my final edits per is.
What will my edits per be? I think it’ll be somewhere around one in 10,000 or better. That’s 1 error every 40 pages or so, if that. In any case, whatever this number is will represent my edits per upon publication. That’s useful to know.
I was thinking about this a lot today: how bad does your edits per metric have to be before readers start tagging you in reviews? Fortunately, I don’t know if I’ve ever received a review that ever mentioned typos, so I know that my work quality is high. But I would imagine there has to be a threshold that, above, you’re fine and people won’t care, and below, they will rip your book apart. My goal is to keep improving the quality of my manuscripts, but it does make you think.
I’ll share that number when I receive it.
I also received the book cover illustration for Year of the Rat. The art looks great and I approved the designer to move to the next phase of typography. I expect a draft sometime next week and once it’s finished, I will share it.
I also booked three podcast interviews this week. One of them is fairly large and almost all of you will recognize it. Will be my second time on the show and I’m looking forward to going back.
The other two are smaller shows, but I always enjoy smaller shows because they are more intimate and often lead to really interesting conversations.
For production, I wrote 4,000 words. I’m making great progress in my current book on R. A. M. P book. I’m still on track to finishing it this weekend. I will also be working on my other top secret project, which is also coming along nicely. i’m going to go ahead and open up voting because I have a feeling I may finish this book sooner than expected. It’s not ideal to do voting over Labor Day so I expect a smaller turn out, but I want to keep things moving. Vote on my next book here: https://forms.gle/FjD65hn8JzsBQdxMA
In other news, I hit my quota for the week this afternoon, so every word I write between now and Saturday at midnight is pure surplus. That’s a beautiful thing, and I’m already sitting over two days worth of surplus. It took me a week to build two days of surplus. I want to shoot for a seven day surplus. That will give me some cushion in case I start missing workout days due to personal circumstances or other reasons.
In final news, I achieved inbox zero today. I haven’t seen the bottom of my inbox in almost 2 months. That alone is a productivity win. I can’t remember who said this, but I absolutely love this quote: “what’s in your email inbox is what’s on your mind.” It’s one of the truest things I’ve ever heard. I’m just way more stressed out when my email inbox is out of control. Now I should be good for a few days…
Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys their Friday night. Final reminder that this month’s power hour is NOT tomorrow. It’s next week.
YTD Word Count: 23,000
Plan: 1,252,000
Words Over/-Under Plan: 6,500
Days Ahead/-Behind: 2.36
Projected Annual Word Count: 1,507,800
Projected Decade Word Count: 15,078,000
Deadline 12/31/2023
Days to Go Until 12/31/23: 485
Average Pulp Speed: 2.6
