It has been a year and a half since I started working with my client, a prominent retired neurosurgeon. The last months have been taken over with administrative tasks for which my old job as an academic program coordinator prepared me well. (Lesson: Do not disdain the desk job you may have now; the skills you are learning will enhance the writing career you may someday fall/wander/ or otherwise move into.)
With a manuscript that has been beaten into a form presentable enough to shop around to agents and publishers, I have spent the last months toiling away at the following tasks: researching the market for books similar to the one I have written; researching agents and publishers, including university presses; crafting query letters to agents; processing comments from Beta readers and tweaking the manuscript; assisting my client with brainstorming his own contacts (some pretty prominent ones there); formatting, printing off, and mailing the tome to connections out there who might provide a trenchant blurb or a referral to an agent; and taking gross advantage of my writer and editor friend Kathy Papajohn's expertise, not to mention her tendencies toward grammar totalitarianism.
