I wouldn't change a thing. All the experience I've gained matters. Without it I wouldn't understand what to do and how to do it next.
I'm bad at learning from other people's mistakes. As my own experience shows, no one knows how you should move forward except you. No one knows what will work, and what worked for someone else isn't guaranteed to work for you too. Funny enough, I already wrote about other people's experience in one of my books...
I believe I have to walk my own path — that's just my view. And everything that doesn't work out for me isn't a mistake, it's my experience. The process moves forward gradually; the main thing is not to miss anything and to draw conclusions.
The first book is like a first child — you have no idea what to do with her once she's ready. I had my own vision, and I think most writers have something similar. Everyone wants to see their book on paper, hold it in their hands, flip through it, look with their own eyes at something that, until recently, existed only in their head. I'm no exception. Don't ask a writer at that stage: Who is your book for? What do you plan to do with it next? How will you find your reader?
I don't know!!!
First I want to see my masterpiece. And so what if it isn't perfect — naive, with overlong descriptions, details that matter only to me and interest no reader, full of verbal tics.
I wrote a book!
So I started taking the steps that would help. Editing. I paid a fairly substantial sum for it — around $700 — and waited impatiently for the editor's first read-through. I was nervous, of course. At the time I didn't understand that an editor and a beta reader are two different things. But the editor gave her opinion — she liked the book. That gave me wings. There were two rounds of proofing. And... a year later, I understand that those were just the flowers, and the editing was actually fairly shallow.
But I got such a boost of inspiration from it! That editor had clearly read dozens of manuscripts, and if she liked my text, that was a big deal.
After her, I edited the first manuscript another five or six times. And a year later, after writing the second book, I realized I'd grown as a writer to the next level and could easily apply a much sharper level of criticism to my first creation. So I edited the first book another five times.
Do I regret the money I spent on editing? No. And I'd do it again. Because only with time did I understand what it was actually for.
That's just how it is for me.
The one thing that would have been worth learning earlier is promotion. I'd have started talking to readers much sooner. Not from the moment of publication, but from the moment the book began. You don't have to share the text — but you can share the process. 'I'm writing a book. Here's what it's about. Here's what's on my mind about it.' By the time the book came out (even two of them), I had to build an audience from scratch. That's harder than growing one ahead of time.
If you're just starting out now — don't do any of this 'right.' Do it however it comes. That's right too. Experience can't be handed down — you have to live it. But at least know that everything you're going through is normal. Someone has already been here before you.