Sunday 12 May 2013

The Acquistition of Beta Readers

On the morning of the 18th of April I finished The Final Read Through. A riot of strange feelings and uncertainties. Fear, excitement, joy, loss. Weird shit, y'know?

That afternoon I gathered together necessary info and learned to let go of my book, which sounds far less demanding than the reality after all these months of hoarding my words to myself, and sent out the manuscript to my Beta Readers. The Heart in Mouth...all too accurately named.

I cannot help but wonder that a story, once read, is then truly awakened. The soul of it pulled through different perspectives and transmuted. Into what, though?

I must say I'm rather happy with my group of readers: intelligent, diverse, trustworthy. There are eleven now. Some friends that are keen of mind readers; genre fan and aero-tinker Dan Morley, post modern ingenue and feminist Imogen Pickles, ear pleasin' music blogger Jo Byron, writer and photographer Leanne Williamson & the gentleman of geek taste Miles Houghton. A couple of folk from my writers circle; John Clay & Leanne Moden. And some intellectuals that I have got to know, and respect, on Tor; George Brell (GBrell), John Graham (JohnPoint), Steven Shalter (Shalter) & Thistlepong. Over the last couple of years I have follwed and participated in Jo Walton's obsessively detailed reread of The King Killer Chronicles (so far...) by Patrick Rothfuss. This awesome conversation has hummed through my downtime from writing. Trial by fire. And so masochistic tendencies of a writer emerge.

The waiting....Well. Yes. Over the last couple of weeks there as been the occasional tidbit of positive feedback that has somewhat elevated the manic dreariness. The deadline is for the first week of June. 'Deadline' is such a dramatically terrifying turn of phrase, is it not?  This was the first time in a long time that I was not writing or editing. I indulged in a few hedonistic nights, stealthy escaping routine as night pulled in. It's good to see the stars once and a while, and if wheeling? Even better.

Then Ms Moden's grammar checklist started trickling in by chapters. Pleasing and galling all at once. Pleasing because the mistakes were often silly ones. Incorrect auto-corrects, typos, misplaced apostrophes, the occasional clunky sentence or confusing possessive pronouns. Galling because of the embarrassingly consistent misuse of its/it's and to/too. Two of my latter Beta's received the revised version.

I began to put some effort into researching publication possibilities, my mother's day gift of the Writers & Artist's Yearbook proving useful. Drawing up tables of agencies, agents and publishers open to fantasy submissions.

I finally bought a chair and officiated a corner, on the borderlands of my son's toys, as my workspace. My mural got a tidy up, and even did a pen sketch of Cerid.






As you can see, on a post it note. Which, after the bath escapade, I thought I would use to map the time line of OBR:2 in bullet point. The earlier chapter plan proved useful but the editing process has helped give me a clearer structural overview, resulting in some reordering of events. As I marched forward with the bones of the plot I could not help but dance my way back along them, fleshing out. Pen on paper anchoring me, the notebook opened, then typing out in modernity the sentences. Watching life bloom on digitalised skin.

At the last: Writing. As necessary as breathing.



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