Greetings!
As a means of celebrating this month’s release of Phoebe James I’d like to take you through the process in which this 130,000-word tale came to be.
When I first had the idea to write Phoebe James, I didn’t even know it was going to be a book—or even a finished one. I had gotten other ideas for stories that, to this day, have not made it to completion. Basically, I just had an image in my mind of a girl sitting on the front steps of her house on a cloudy day, and it made me curious. I began asking myself questions like, “Who is she?”, “What’s her name?”, “Where is she going?”, “Why is she sad?” From there, a story began to unfold. I could see that a family was going to take her in and open her eyes to a world other than the one she knew, and that this experience would further develop her character. The beginning, in and of itself, was already like a happy ending, only, realistically speaking, I realized that Phoebe would have been more accustomed to the sphere she had grown up in. It would create this conflict between happiness and a fish-out-of-water experience for her that proved to be an interesting narrative to write. I began writing a chapter at a time until I had a bad spell of writer’s block for about six months. I was about to begin my first semester of college at the time and, in order to prepare, I read several self-help, success, and motivational books. And then I realized, if I was going to be busy with four months’ worth of classes, I wanted to get this book finished before anything else put it off again. So I “put my nose to the grindstone”—or keyboard, in my case. This new time limit I had of about three months before school began helped me become more efficient in the writing process (see: Parkinson’s Law), and I realized those first few chapters were lacking because the characters had not been fully developed yet.
That was the catalyst.
Once I knew the personality and motivations of each of the characters, the story began to write itself. I could not type fast enough. There were so many different angles to see from, so many different interests and impacts made by every aspect of the story. But it didn’t hit me until towards the end of the first draft that one character in particular made the perfect lens to see the entire story from. (If you want to know who that is, you have to read the book!). I finished the first draft in three months, working roughly 4 hours a day, or writing 2,000 words, 5 days a week, whichever came last (yes, you read that correctly).
I continued the editing process in my spare time after school began. On Saturdays, I worked on the cover art. At one point, I drew illustrations for the chapter headings, which proved to be very time consuming and the images turned out to be poor quality, so I’m sorry to say I left those out. (Maybe one day I can fix those up and add them to a secondary edition of the book.) After I finished editing the second draft, my mom asked if she could read the story, which quickly brought about the third draft from my making sure the story would actually make sense to another person. I always hovered nearby when she was reading, trying to seem like I wasn’t paying attention. It took me by surprise whenever she laughed at something that I intended to be funny or grew so absorbed in the story that I had to repeat myself when I spoke to her. She loved it. Through the rest of the editing process, she helped me spot the grammatical errors that I didn’t see from working too closely with the story and gave me the input that I needed from another pair of eyes. I’ll never be able to thank her enough for all the help she gave me.
After another three rounds of editing—and some breaks in between to keep from losing my mind—I was finally ready to submit the cover art and book text for copyrights. Essentially, this is not necessary, thanks to the Copyright Amendment of 1989, but there are some legal benefits of registering a work with the copyright office that I wanted to have. Uploading and submitting the final document to the copyright office felt like an act of publishing in and of itself, since that would be the first access I would give of my work outside my family.
Honestly, it was a bit nerve-racking.
After that, I began uploading the files for publishing and making the minor tweaks necessary for formatting. I had decided to release the book on January 5th because 5 is my favorite number, and it happened to fall on a Tuesday, which is the most popular day for new releases (don’t ask me why). From the first day of June that I sat down and decided to finish this book at all costs, to the evening I clicked “publish”, roughly translates to a timespan of one and a half years. If I said I wasn’t tired, I’d be lying, but I learned so much through this process and would do it all over again. Phoebe debuted as a #1 new release in the Children’s 1800s US Historical Fiction category on Amazon, thanks largely to the eager purchases of my friends and family. I’ll be eternally grateful to everyone who supported me and cheered me on during this journey. Your enthusiasm kept mine aflame in the bleak moments. Thank you for reading this entire page of my thoughts. Have a blessed day!
– C. G. E.
C. G. Eppinette 