The Proofs are here!!!

Hooray!!! The book is 272 pages long so far.  I say so far because there may or may not be a few things I forgot -- like the TITLE PAGE!!  OOPS!!  But it will come.  The main goal for me was to get the manuscript in a publishable format.  And that FINALLY happened!

I thought I would share with you a bit of the journey of the book and why it took me so long to get to this point.

First of all, when you go back in your life to parts of it you would rather forget, it stirs up a lot of emotion.  To the point, many times I had to put it away to heal and think about the things I had learned in my life. 

Even with Carol and I sitting down and working together on it, it was hard and I still broke down at times.  BUT I will admit the healing was something I never would have expected.  I had a fear people would laugh, and taunt me more than ever, because that is how much of my life has been.  But what I learned is that I cannot fear people.  I can't be afraid to share my story because there are hundreds out there just like me who are.  We have to help them become stronger!!

The second stumbling block was trying to get all the formatting that was done to transfer in a published status without having to reformat all 272 pages.  There were three programs I tried numerous times and each time they failed.  When I saw a friend's book cover for her books, I thought WHOA!!  I need to spruce mine up a bit!!  I searched for my file with my covers in it, and could not find it.  I did a computer search as well as a manual search and even searched my file folder where my chapter files were. Nothing. I was so frustrated. I started over.

Then I went to see a dear friend and take her a birthday present.  In mentioning this to her she said, "Well Laura, maybe someone is trying to tell you something.  Maybe you need to pray about it."  I went and ran my errands, yet this stayed on my mind.  I got home and tried again and it didn't work.  Then I took my friends words to heart.  I had a small prayer and asked that if I was to share my story I needed help to get it published.  I went back to the third program and tried again.  Now before I stopped because my cover ended up sideways.  ACK!!  This time I started with the manuscript and it went in so beautifully!!  I cried!!  I thought, "Are you kidding me!!"  The formatting, page numbering everything was correct!!  I was Snoopy Dancing!!!

But then I remembered, the real trick was the cover.  I had to recreate my cover because I didn't have the original anymore (I thought) and when I went to upload it that is when I saw it.  The wording was something like, "Don't have a cover?  Use one of our pre-made covers!"  So I did...the first one there was MY COVER and I knew it!!  And that is how I finally got past the obstacles to get the book in PROOF Stages!!1

Just as a side note....that original cover I could not find?  Two days later it appeared in my book folder again where it was supposed to be.  Go Figure!!!