So a few people have asked when they can read something I've written (from a fictional sense that is). I now have an answer - a plan shining in it's gleaming purity. Here's the deal - I'm currently editing and rewriting my NaNo novella, polishing it up to full book length and cleaning up some of the more hideous errors that were made. The first few chapters are now up to a point where I don't feel ashamed to look at them any more. I'm not going to post them here, among other things I don't want to actually put the manuscript under a Creative Commons license yet.
But what I will do is release the chapters out to people who are willing to critique them. I'm going to make it a serial release project - I'm leaning towards one chapter a week, but I could be convinced to do one chapter every two weeks. If you're interested in reading it send me an email. The kicker is that I really want the feedback - so I'm not going to send you the following chapter until I get feedback on the current chapter :-) It doesn't have to be extensive, or great literary criticism - just a quick note on what you thought of the chapter and what you'd like to see more (or less) of.
My current plan is to start it "officially" over E3 week - May 15th. What I would do is send the first chapter out slightly early so people who wanted to read it during E3 travel would have that option. Let me know what format you'd like - I have them in plain text, but I'll probably do a MS Word version, and could do PDF easily if there was interest.
This will also serve as a spur to keep me moving through the story. Editing is painful, and I'm finding that I tend to procrastinate it. Having a deadline for getting the next chapter done will help me manage my time. :-) I've got a bit of a buffer in place - I'm wrapping up editing Chapter 4 now. But as we move further into the story I need to do more new scenes and heavier editing so I need to get a bit ahead of the game. The current outline has 18 chapters although that might collapse to 17 - I don't like the current ending and I might monkey that around a bit.
But what I will do is release the chapters out to people who are willing to critique them. I'm going to make it a serial release project - I'm leaning towards one chapter a week, but I could be convinced to do one chapter every two weeks. If you're interested in reading it send me an email. The kicker is that I really want the feedback - so I'm not going to send you the following chapter until I get feedback on the current chapter :-) It doesn't have to be extensive, or great literary criticism - just a quick note on what you thought of the chapter and what you'd like to see more (or less) of.
My current plan is to start it "officially" over E3 week - May 15th. What I would do is send the first chapter out slightly early so people who wanted to read it during E3 travel would have that option. Let me know what format you'd like - I have them in plain text, but I'll probably do a MS Word version, and could do PDF easily if there was interest.
This will also serve as a spur to keep me moving through the story. Editing is painful, and I'm finding that I tend to procrastinate it. Having a deadline for getting the next chapter done will help me manage my time. :-) I've got a bit of a buffer in place - I'm wrapping up editing Chapter 4 now. But as we move further into the story I need to do more new scenes and heavier editing so I need to get a bit ahead of the game. The current outline has 18 chapters although that might collapse to 17 - I don't like the current ending and I might monkey that around a bit.