finishing touches on book

Doing a mockup from ideas in my head for the back cover my memoir, Bipolar Courage: Are You Sure You're Not Autistic? The colours blend well. Of course, I will fluff around to optimise the images when I do the final files.

These were the two paintings most inspired by 'Maxwell' (the 'anti-hero' in my story). They're mentioned in the story. They're cut up now but I can always ressurect them. (Tip: take pics of your paintings).

Just Like Fire (Devine Fire Goddess + Synchronicity)

Printed manuscript

Today was a big milestone. I finally printed out the manuscript, after nearly two years of hard work. I printed it as an A5 spiral bound 'book' at my local stationery shop. A5 was the nearest size to my manuscript. The actual size is a bit taller and wider. I printed it without scaling to fit, as I wanted to see if I was happy with the main body text size (printing to A5 cut off my headers and footers but the printer reassured me that they will print out in a book).

Also, despite checking again and again, using grammar and spelling apps/tools etc, there will still be things I won't notice until it's on paper. It's really tedious but there is the odd missed punctuation etc. It's easier to recognise when there's a repeated phrase, on paper.

​I am marking up with red pen on the manuscript, then transferring to the manuscript. I managed to do around a fifth of it, today. So it will take me around a week to do the rest.

Doing final proof-read of manuscript, finally printed.

I am doing my best to polish it. My psychologist advised she is skim-reading the manuscript (she'll let me know if she wants me to think twice about anything I've put in there). A friend has been reading but has been snowed under. So it's been mostly going it alone. Checking, over and over and over. Just like I did with Pet Purpose: Your Unspoken Voice.

A friend with better grammar than me proof-read the final printed manuscript of Pet Purpose. I felt so disheartened when I saw all the red (I asked her to only correct anything that was obviously wrong). Yet, I 'm glad, as those final stages just really set off all the years of hard work.

All going well, the book should be 'live' within two to three weeks. Designing the cover should be straight forward (visual arts is actually more my domain than writing). Doing the formatting and conversion for e-book can be a pain, from past experience.