As I mentioned a few days ago I finished the third edit through my book and sent it off to a select group of people to go through it and give me some feedback. I’m shocked and pleased that one of my friends managed to get through it in less than two days and has already given me some feedback, which is overall pretty positive. I think the best was “omg, I’m so glad I liked your story”. Yes, that is a fear, but it’s even scarier for me because she only has one person she has to worry about. I have to worry about everyone who may ever read it. No pressure. She’s going to send me some more in depth feedback in the next few days, especially about some of the grammar and missing words I had. I’m not surprised on that. Another good comment, after talking about the word count, was “so you’ll either laugh or want to kill me when I say I want more.” I would say that’s a pretty positive comment. It’s actually interesting. I’ve sent the manuscript to a handful of people, and she is one of the only ones who has never read any of my work, so I guess it would make sense that she wouldn’t know what to expect.
No one else has gotten back to be yet, but obviously her speed was unprecedented. Still, I’m very excited to hear from more people.
But now I’m in this weird place. I don’t want to go back through the story until I get some more feedback. I still think I need a break from it for a while and so staying away isn’t a problem. There are some areas that I know I want to go back through, but it’s not pressing right now. I did spend some time today copying book two out of the original file and into a separate one. There’s still a solid 100 untouched pages in that book. So many words. Such a poor ability to figure out how much was in the first book. It works out for me though, because I have all this extra work that I just need to touch up later. And add to. Book two is sitting at about 65k words right now, whereas book one started closer to 80k when I started the edits. As I was copying it though, I noticed that there were a lot of parts where I just wrote in note form what I should write there, but didn’t actually write anything. So, I think it’ll be okay to beef up that word count, too. Also, I remember trying to get through everything as fast as I could so the word count wouldn’t be out of control, so I think it should be easy to bulk it out, without making the story drag.
Aftr going like crazy for so long, I not really sure where to go next. Book two, yes. Book one, not so much. So I’ve been doing research into literary agencies. It’s such a weird thing. I’m going through websites and judging if I think agents will be a good fit for me based on what they are looking for, but really having no idea. I’m making notes, though, and trying to figure out what I think will work best for me, and what they want in terms of submission guidelines. I feel like I’m back in school again or something, but I guess it’s the next phase. Well, after I go through the feedback I get from my test readers. I think the worst part is that, once I submit my queries, it’s up to a 12 week wait. And, they might not even tell you you want them. It’s just a “assume we don’t want you.” Yay!
But I’m sure it’ll be fine. Positive. It’ll be great.
An Invincible Summer 