In the fall of 2021, a bunch of my writer friends created a group called The Sisterhood of the Black Pen, and we published an anthology together.

This was my first time being involved in the whole process from writing, beta reading, edits, proofreading, and publication. I was also fortunate enough to be part of the discussion regarding changes to the cover to make it more appealing. I also did the sketches that accompanied each title page for each short story.

All in all, it was an exhilarating learning experience for me and here are my takeaways:

Publishing a piece is a lot of work; writing the story is a surprisingly small portion of that work.

My piece went through a couple beta reads and was better for it each time I effectively rewrote more than 60% of the story each time I received feedback for a beta read, which meant that very little from my first draft made it to the end result. I’m told that this is the way it should be.

After submitting my final version, the work went through a series of detailed line edits with some developmental comments. This process once again resulted in about a 30% rewrite of the story.

Finally, the proofreader caught a few more typos and awkward word choices, which I again corrected.

Formatting a book isn’t easy, and art is fun.

To add art in the pages, you have to make sure that it is a transparent image that would look good in both a black and white backgrounds, as e-readers have both options. This was somewhat challenging to do, but I learned a lot about how to make that happen. This information is very useful for me in the future, as I intend to add sketches and images within my books in the future.

Fowler Ink formatted our book, and did an incredible job!

Miriam is amazing!

A big shout-out, and thank you to Miriam, our fearless leader of the Sisterhood, who produced and directed the entire project. She is absolutely amazing.

I’ve tasted blood, and I love it.

This project was somewhat stressful with all the deadlines for each step, but I absolutely loved it. I would do it again and again. I thoroughly enjoyed every step of it. Sending my first draft out to be read by beta readers was nerve wracking and my anxiety was extremely high at the chance of negative feedback, but everything was positive!

Don’t get me wrong, the first draft was terrible, and the feedback reflected that, but the beta reading process made the final product so much better that I realized that negative feedback at this stage was a very positive thing.

Tearing the piece apart and reconstructing it to something greater was extremely satisfying and I absolutely cannot wait to do it again.

If anything, being part of this anthology has hooked me on the writing process for life.

Since that’s the case, all I can do is write.