I got a message from beta exchange person 1. She's probably not going to do much until the end of November. Considering so far she's beta'd 3 of my chapters in the last 2 1/2 months it will literally be 2012 before she's done. Meanwhile I've beta'd essentially four versions of chapter 1 for her. I have a feeling this is going to be less that useful. Beta exchange person number 2 is great though, I know some of her comments are going to help me with my second revision.
I think I chose a good place for beta reading and exchange. Sometimes I've wondered if the second revision would be the right time for that, but I think I'd just not improve much between 1st and 2nd. I think I'll have a better idea of what I need to do in the next revision now.
Also listening to my story on my commute has made me realize I have a lot of work to do. Things that I didn't pick up on while reading are popping out to me while listening. Especially when I use the same word two or three times right next to each other. That really grates when listening.
Gudanov, can I ask what you're writing? (Tell me to stop being lazy and read back through the thread, if that's annoying!)
I'm loving your idea of listening to writing while driving. I'll try that.
I'm writing a fantasy novel. I'm on the first revision right now.
Listening on the commute has been interesting and really has made me realize I'm so not there yet. It's also kind of fun, I made an audiobook, yeah the narrator is really bad (though far better than I thought text-to-speech could be), but still fun.
I'm very used to speech-to-text - I have programs that read scanned books for me when I have more-dyslexic-than-usual days. I expect there are better programs out there than what I've got, though. Loving the idea of creating your own audiobook, as well as the usefulness of that for revision. My grandfather used to write (really good!) children's stories for us, and my grandmother would record them onto tape. The hours she must have put into that. I don't think we ever realised.
My M.A. dissertation supervisor has been telling me to turn the literature review section of my dissertation into a paper for an academic journal. I hadn't actually written it when she was suggesting this, so I dismissed the idea, but now that I've almost finished that section, I realise how much there is to say about the topic*. Given that half of my writing is going to have to be cut, and I wouldn't want to lose it completely, it's something I should look into. I'm nervous of attempting publication of a theoretical paper, though - as opposed to a written-up research project - because there are style expectations that I don't know whether I can achieve. I'll have to send it to some people to give me opinions as to whether it's remotely publishable, I think.
*Rehabilitation, its professionals and their approach to and training about disability. This subject is only interesting to about six people in the world. Fortunately, I am one of those people. Otherwise I'd be bored by now.
Just wanted to say. I'm annoyed a bit at beta exchange person 1, because it was an agreement to turn around chapters for each other and I've been timely about it. Beta readers are a totally different matter, that's people being awesomely generous enough to read and give me comments and corrections on a friggn' 120k word novel that still has typos and awkward sentences. I love them all.
Still working on 21 and 22, but almost done. I had my wife look at 22 and she pointed out a place where Aimee's emotions aren't complex enough and she's right, so some fixing will be needed.
The listening is revealing that I need to do tightening and rephrasing pretty badly. Nonetheless, I'm feeling a bit encouraged, it seems like the story and characters are going along okay. The characters probably need a bit more work, but they aren't terrible to my ear. I already knew that I needed to work on tightening and rephrasing, so that doesn't seem all that bad.
So I took a nap this afternoon and missed a call from my agent. And she never calls unless she has news, which in this case is probably X Publisher likes the zombie book, or X Publisher passed on it. And now I have to wait till tomorrow to find out which it is.
Learn from me, people! Don't nap!
And she didn't leave a MESSAGE? Or email or SOMETHING??
AUGH.
No, she left a message. Said to call her tomorrow.
