As my son says, I “locked in” for the past month and made some major progress on The ADHD Book. I thought I’d share a peak into my process and where I stand, because I know I’m always intensely curious about other people’s writing processes. If this post is riddled with typos, forgive me in advance. I’ve been staring at my screen for five days straight writing APA citations and references. I no longer know what should and shouldn’t be in italics. I surrender.
A few weeks ago, I finished the writing portion of The ADHD Book, which actually has a working title, so maybe I should start there. It’s called Open Minds: Designing and Teaching for ADHD Students’ Success. For now.
Editing Phase One
Once that first draft was done, I printed out each chapter (there are nine, plus an introduction), read through it carefully, made edits with a colored pen, and then came back onto my desktop computer and made those edits in the manuscript. My grown-up work roles were quiet for the past few weeks, so I was able to dedicate most of my work days to this, getting a couple of chapters done each day. NGL, by Thursday, I was ready to not be locked in anymore and go watch The Circle on Netflix instead (god I love that show). But my son tells me once you are locked in, you gotta see it through, so I did.
Editing Phase Two
After taking the weekend off, it was then time to dive into citations and references. I don’t cite or write references as I’m writing. Instead, I’ll just write put (cite) where it needs to go and add a hyperlink to the source. I know most people probably don’t do it this way, but if I stopped to write out correct citations while writing, I would never write again. Instead, I save up the heinousness so I can face it all at once.
That’s what I was up to last week, facing the heinousness. So many details. So many little decisions. But I have a very solid first draft of my reference page. Because of all those details, I will definitely take a couple of more passes on reviewing it, but for now, I can call it done.
Editing Phase Three
This week, I’m going to give myself a few days off, and then I’ll be reviewing the pile of books and literature that I’ve accumulated while writing that didn’t make it into the first draft. See the thing is, when you’re writing, knowledge is still being produced, right? Or people hear you are writing something so they’ll send you resources, which is cool, but I had to keep my eye on the prize most of the time, and didn’t typically veer off my planned writing route to consider that content.
I’m kind of looking forward to this, because I love to read and love new ideas. I will chew through that over the course of a few days, weaving anything critical into the manuscript. That said, my publisher asked me to aim for 75k words, and she’s at 77k, so I don’t have a lot of wiggle room here.
Editing Phase Four
After reviewing that literature, I will then print out the whole shabang and read it in its entirety. I remember from my first book writing experience that by this point, it was very common to think "I never want to read this again.” I know enough to know that’s part of the process, and, it needs to be done. I’m going to be looking to fix any errors, obviously, but here I’m mostly looking for a cohesive flow and a strong narrative that pulls readers from the start to finish.
Editing Phase Five
Finally, I’ll take another look at my edit’s formatting guidelines, and go back through to double check things like headings, page numbers, references, etc. All that detail jazz. By this point, I will be repeatedly mumbling to myself, “I’m never writing another book. Stop me if I try to,” which again is a very normal part of the process.
That’s the plan, at least. My deadline is at the end of July, so I’m feeling really good about meeting it, perhaps beating it.
Hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into my writing and editing process.