Lessons Learned

The book flood anthology is, for all intents and purposes, done! Woohoo!

It’s not pretty, but it is what it is in the time I had. And in the process I learned several valuable lessons:

1. Pick a theme before picking your stories.
My theme was apparently “early stories that are out-dated and I didn’t know what else to do with them.” My stories run the gamut from comedy to morbid, and span a variety of genres. And when I came up short on stories I filled in the space with a few poems.
Also, I kept switching between all dark flash and all non-dark flash and all new stories to all old stories. Figure out what kind of stories you’re going to collect before you waste a lot of time editing the wrong story.

2. Give yourself lots of time – then add some.
I’ve been toying with the idea of an anthology for a while, but it wasn’t until I decided to use it for my book flood book that I started to get serious about it. I’m not sure exactly when this was, but I know I didn’t take into account the time suck NaNo would be.

3. Decide an approximate number of pages early.
It will help you figure out the size of your anthology and how many stories you’re going to need to work with.

4. Decide the binding ahead of time.
This kind of goes with number three because the number of pages will help determine the kind of binding you can go for. Just a few pages, you can have a chapbook, more and you’ll have to look for some other kind of binding.

5. Take it seriously.
I got caught up in the whole idea of an anthology and started working on it before I really thought it through. Then I kept changing my mind and waffling on the stories. If I’d been a little more serious about it I would have thought it through better and saved myself a lot of time and angst.

The anthology is a little stark looking, to my eye. It could have used a few flourishes like a more decorative font for the titles, maybe a graphic or two. Again, this is something I just didn’t have time for. And something to keep in mind for next time.

Ironically, I have an idea for next year’s NaNo and it’s a themed anthology. But trust me when I say I’ll be taking my time when it comes to publishing it.