I had a beautiful blog post. It was wonderful. I came up with it in the shower. And when I got out, it was gone. Now you'll have to make do with this one.
Slow... Why does it have to be so slow. <grin> So the revision on flight is in progress. I got all of the Beta's back. I smashed them all together (thank you combine feature) and got to work. I love that feature. Putting them all together in one document really lets me see the places where more than one person has commented on the same problem. Not to mention I only have to go through the document once.
At first glance, as I scanned through each as they returned, I didn't think there would be much in the way of drastic changes. So I was optimistic that I would get through it quickly. I have a rainbow of Beta's ;) Each specializes in different things. Some are writers who give me great feedback based on knowing the craft of writing, others are nit pickers who find my grammar or punctuation or redundancies. Then I have readers who don't necessarily know craft but they know my story, both past and future. Then there are the cold readers. The people who I hope will one day pick up my story just to read it. It's amazing what they find.
I love having so many different viewpoints to help me make my story better. The comments, while at first glance seemed straight forward, when I got into them really caused me to delve deeper. Showing places where the reader wanted to know more that I didn't see for the forest. The end result comes in new scenes, characters that didn't have as much screen time have found the light of day. Questions that weren't important to me I now realize I need to answer. It's an exciting thing. I know that it's stereotypical for writers not to want to change their babies. But I love (and hate, lol) the revision process. I don't have a problem whacking out phrases, lines or even entire scenes if they aren't working. Sure, some times there's a touch of whine (but I liked that) But on the whole if it doesn't work it goes. And I can always see the improvement for the pruning. Makes the tree more healthy.
So that's where I'm at this week. I'm only a quarter of the way through instead of done like I had hoped. But I really like the direction it's going. Now that school is out I'm hoping I can move faster, keep your fingers crossed.
Slow... Why does it have to be so slow. <grin> So the revision on flight is in progress. I got all of the Beta's back. I smashed them all together (thank you combine feature) and got to work. I love that feature. Putting them all together in one document really lets me see the places where more than one person has commented on the same problem. Not to mention I only have to go through the document once.
At first glance, as I scanned through each as they returned, I didn't think there would be much in the way of drastic changes. So I was optimistic that I would get through it quickly. I have a rainbow of Beta's ;) Each specializes in different things. Some are writers who give me great feedback based on knowing the craft of writing, others are nit pickers who find my grammar or punctuation or redundancies. Then I have readers who don't necessarily know craft but they know my story, both past and future. Then there are the cold readers. The people who I hope will one day pick up my story just to read it. It's amazing what they find.
I love having so many different viewpoints to help me make my story better. The comments, while at first glance seemed straight forward, when I got into them really caused me to delve deeper. Showing places where the reader wanted to know more that I didn't see for the forest. The end result comes in new scenes, characters that didn't have as much screen time have found the light of day. Questions that weren't important to me I now realize I need to answer. It's an exciting thing. I know that it's stereotypical for writers not to want to change their babies. But I love (and hate, lol) the revision process. I don't have a problem whacking out phrases, lines or even entire scenes if they aren't working. Sure, some times there's a touch of whine (but I liked that) But on the whole if it doesn't work it goes. And I can always see the improvement for the pruning. Makes the tree more healthy.
So that's where I'm at this week. I'm only a quarter of the way through instead of done like I had hoped. But I really like the direction it's going. Now that school is out I'm hoping I can move faster, keep your fingers crossed.