In one of my last posts, I said I needed to read Return to Illur again and that I was pretty sure I didn’t have enough fingers to count how many times I’ve read it so far. Well, I have data. Of course I have data. I’m very much a spreadsheet kind of gal. I keep track of the rounds I go through while writing and editing a book, so I thought I could actually figure out how many times I have read Return to Illur. It turns out I can’t.

The problem starts with how I wrote this book. I began with a basic outline. Then I turned that into a more detailed bullet point outline. From there, I kept going through the book and filling things in. Chapters got more information, dialogue was added, and things changed. Then, I went back through earlier chapters to make sure everything still worked.

At some point, the outline became a book, but I am not entirely sure when. This makes it difficult to figure out where the writing stopped and the editing began. I was reading and changing things while I was still creating the book. Eventually, though, I started what I actually documented as editing rounds.

I began with my “Pre-Edit,” which makes absolutely no sense now that I am looking at how much editing I had already done. For that round, I read the entire book to make sure everything made sense. Then I broke the manuscript into chunks and put it into ProWritingAid. I edited about 30 pages a day while also listening to it with Speechify. After that, I put everything back into the main manuscript.

Was I done reading it? Nope. I did another polish where I read/listened straight through the book again. I looked at the ProWritingAid suggestions again, and decided which were genuine problems and which were just suggestions that did not work for my writing.

Next, I formatted the book in InDesign. Once it looked like an actual book, I exported it as a PDF, put it on my iPad in GoodNotes, and read the entire thing again. This time I was editing the formatted book, which meant I was looking at the writing but also paying attention to how everything looked on the page. Every change then had to go back into both my main manuscript and InDesign.

This brings me to the paperback sitting beside me right now. I read Return to Illur again in the physical proof/final proofreading round. I was checking the book to make sure everything looked the way it was supposed to look before publication. Since, apparently, I enjoy doing this to myself, I also planned another full physical proofread for the hardcover.

The interesting thing is that none of these reads are really the same. One time I am looking at the story. Another time I am checking continuity. Then I am looking at character development or dialogue. Later I am paying attention to individual sentences and repeated words. Listening to the book catches different things than reading it. Reading a formatted PDF is different from reading a Scrivener/Google Doc. Holding an actual paperback somehow makes things jump out that I overlooked approximately eight billion times on a computer screen.

So, how many times have I read Return to Illur? I still have absolutely no idea. I can count the later editing rounds. I can count the full read-throughs I documented. What I can’t count are all those early passes when I was reading, writing, adding, changing, and building the book at the same time.

Apparently, I need better data.