Countdown to publication: What's the holdup?

Hi, and welcome back. There's two previous "Countdown" posts - did you read them? If you haven't you can see the links to them on the right -----> Go on, I'll wait. *Jeopardy theme music* All done? :)

So, I mentioned I'm close to publishing. What's the hold up? Two THREE things.

1 - I'm still seeking & destroying my fillers, redundant words and repetitive words. The last two are my least offensive and I don't have many, but damn - do I have a lot of fillers! It's a little crazy! :) I saw and retweeted a post about this today. "Just" is my big bad one. I use just for everything and I mean EVERYTHING. At one point, I had well over 100 instances of "just" in my book, I forget exactly how many, I think it was around 150! I worked it down to just (ha) 7, then when I re-wrote the book a few revisions ago, it went back up to 45. Now it's at a manageable 10, though I'm gonna see if I can spare any those. :D Other biggies for me are "about", "around", and "a" anything, such as "a bit", "a little", and "a lot". Since I'm seeking & destroying these, I'm taking the time to once again listen to the book read to me. Scrivener does this, and I LOOOOVE it!! I'd had my Kindle do it for me last year before I got Scrivener, but now I can listen and edit all at once and it's awesome. It's just time consuming.

2 - I gave myself til the 1st (also my wedding anniversary) so I'm taking the time. Putting it up on pre-order (on the 29th or 1st) will give time for a few betas to get back with me, see if I need to make any final changes, as well as starting to advertise and put the book up on Goodreads and such like that. I'm enjoying the whole process and just taking it one day at a time.

3 - I remembered the third thing - how could I forget?! THE BLURB I still don't have one! Ugh!! I can't get it how I want it, and it has become more difficult than any of the book! So my blurb is holding me back. LOL!


Anyone else putting out their first book soon? How are you feeling about it?