There will be no horrors.

The book came easily to me. The chronology was clear, so were the characters and the storylines. Maybe because I was writing autofiction — contemporary autobiographical prose. It's obvious what goes where. I seasoned the narrative with stories, and they brought the dry facts to life.

My first editor was the one who saw the first manuscript. She didn't run off screaming, as far as I could tell. She even praised the ending, noting that it practically begged for a second book. I wasn't thinking about a second book — I was still euphoric over the first. But once I'd finished all the preparations for print and had the first one printed, I got to work on the second.

My editor went through my manuscript twice, and each time there was something to fix. But I was so overconfident that even before the edits, I'd already sent the manuscript to several friends. I'm horrified now, thinking about it — they actually read it! A year later, after two rounds of editorial revisions and ten rounds of my own, I realize there's still plenty left to edit. But they read it in its raw, original state. With all its verbal tics (one of my favorites, "just," appeared 161 times), its clichés and worn metaphors, its excess of participial phrases. For which I declare my eternal gratitude and love to them.

Even though I love order, my manuscripts are total chaos: I might write in Word, then in a Google Doc, then in my own notes. I don't format headings and subheadings in the right font, I ignore paragraph indents, and I might not even notice what font size I'm using — twelve, thirteen, doesn't matter.

But I got lucky with my husband — I dump all my chaos on him. And he sits there for days, grumbling, cleaning up my text and bringing it all into some kind of order.

And it often happens that the moment he finishes and converts the manuscript into the right formats, I find some error in the text, or I suddenly, absolutely have to rewrite one of the paragraphs. That's when he comes right up close to me and hisses:

"Look me in the eye and swear this is the last correction!"

What can I say? I swear... this is definitely the last one for today :)))

That's how files end up named "book_final_3_actually_the_last_one.docx."

I wonder what your first draft looks like — and whether you've dared to show it to anyone.