This book has been on a very long, tiring journey.

I started writing it in 2013, along with three other non-fictions.

After it was edited and formatted; I published it as an e-book on Smashwords in 2014.

I then decided to turn it into a print book, and after having it formatted and the cover done, the first paperback book was published in September 2015.

I then set it up at Kobo, and then Amazon, spreading the book around.

At some point, I considered updating the book and re-releasing it in 2020. It was a nice round numbered year. I thought it would be good. Then shit hit the worldwide fan and it didn’t happen. I then realised I had burnout and needed to deal with personal stuff, and didn’t mention wanting to update the book until 2021 in my yearly to-do list.

But, I finally made it happen. It started with covering my desk in butcher’s paper and pulling out all of my Sharpie pens to use.

 

I laid out the chapters already in the first edition of the book, and then wrote down all the things I wanted to add to it.

 

I had note upon note all scribbled out, and then I refined everything.

 

And then I refined it again, and again, and narrowed it all down into stacks of lined paper. I now had the basis for an update. But I didn’t start on it, although I did create word docs full of ideas on the new matters I was going to write about and then printed them out. 

 

I took photos of my scribblings in November 2021 for socials, and two years later, in November 2023, I posted about all of the projects I wanted to work on in 2024, including this book with all of its paperwork in a thick pink document file box. From Officeworks, of course.

 

But it took until February 2025 to finally get into to the book.

I pulled out everything I had, took a copy of the published e-book, and started getting it done. I spent four days straight updating 7 sections. The following week, I spent two days working on the writing chapter. And then the flurry of activity concerning my two non-fictions and my memoir took over for the rest of the week.

The week after, I worked on two of the publishing sections, and gave the first four chapters in the e-book an edit as I’d corrected and presented my updates in their separated word docs, and pasted the edited versions into the book. The updated files went into a ‘done’ folder, and I took a break for two weeks to get other things done.

With the writing and three publishing chapters being too huge, it became frazzling for my brain. In moving forward to complete this book, I edited and updated every weekend, while doing other projects on Monday and Tuesday, and online courses on Wednesdays.

But, I did complete all of the ideas I’d printed out and marked them as DONE and packed them away.

 

Come June, I thought it would be finished, formatted, and ready for editing. Was I wrong.

I kept up with it every week, trying to finalise the ideas I wanted to add and work on and thought I’d at least have a format done. But every time I saw a TikTok video, I knew there was something else to write about and added it into the book. And then came July. I realised by now this book was bigger than I could have imagined. It was over three times the size of the original, in need of a beta read and an edit, and I still had to format the print version, which I started on July 20^th.

I continued working the formats and getting them in some decent condition into August when I ran through my final edit and sent it off to my editor. August 31^st was my deadline for editing, formatting, and having the cover done.

As it was a refresh of the cover, the same image was used, making it easier, my name was updated to the same uniform colour and font as my other non-fictions, and, after doing a poll in my writer’s group for a new subtitle, that was completed too. There were only two formats, e-book and print paperback, so the covers were limited and quickly finished.

On September the 7^th, I uploaded the print version to KDP and ordered a proof. I thoroughly went over it and found many formatting and spelling issues that needed correcting. I also kept adding new things while the cover was updated with a few tweaks. I uploaded the second version to Ingram for a copy and went over that with a fine-tooth comb. I finished off the blog posts, and did my videos for it.

And now, here we are in November, long past the 10 year anniversary of the first print edition. That was September 15^th, but it’s still 10 years since the paperback was first published.

Happy 10^th anniversary to the print edition of Dream It, Write It, Publish It!, thanks to my amazing cover designer for the refreshed cover, and thanks to my goddamn stamina for dealing with this book all year. I really don’t know how non-fiction writers deal with the constant creation of these books. There’s always so much to add. And when you think you’re done, you end up adding more.