Adventures in Wine Writing...Part 3

As some of you know, I am writing a book about the Ontario wine industry. I’ve been working on it since March of 2007 and I’m about 98% done the first draft now. It’s not a tasting guide – because everyone’s palates are different – but rather it discusses the history behind our wine regions, looks at certain key players, big wine families and some of our more notable winemakers. I’m trying to keep it very balanced amongst our three DVA’s giving each of them equal time in the book. Obviously, it can’t include everyone because that would make for an absolutely massive book, but so that I could discuss every winery in the province, I also created a supplemental book which is a guidebook to every winery in the province. Whether they use grapes, other fruits or vegetables, as long as they are in the provincial limits of Ontario, they are included in the guidebook section of the book.

This past week has been a good week – I am just about finished writing (like I already said) but I was struggling a bit with the title of the final chapter. I had one but I really didn’t like it so I asked my aunt for some advice. We came up with something and then it started my brain thinking on the title for the actual book. A little bit of creative thinking and I managed to come up with the title for the entire book. I’m not going to share it here but I’m very happy to have that accomplished. Speaking of accomplished, I finally put one of the big chapters to bed tonight – the Winemakers. The only chapter left to finish is the final chapter and I’m just waiting on some information from two wineries before I can put it to rest as well. Hopefully by the end of next week I will have the first draft completely done...next step, finding a publisher.

So, having gotten this far, I find myself wondering who else has wrote a book out here. How long did it take you to figure out a title? Was it easy to find a publisher or did you go the self publishing route? How long did it take to write the first draft?