McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Beta Readers for Novel-length work
Kali:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 15, 2010, 02:58:29 AM ---What machine are you working on? I've handled novels twice that long in Word and not had any problems.
This is a good thing to do for getting feedback from betas, definitely; but don;t show them before, however tempting.
A few hundred pages of manuscript are non-trivial either to post or to afford the ink cartridge for your printer, I'd have thought.
--- End quote ---
Actually, the biggest temptation I'm fighting now is to query anyway. I like my synopsis and my query letter, and the first five pages are, I feel, polished enough to send. I know I want comments on some parts, though, and I have this terrible feeling that if I query now, the results will be nightmarish. I'll get the "We like it, send us the whole thing" and be completely elated only to have my heart crushed when they decline the manuscript because it wasn't polished enough. *shudder* Nightmarish, I say.
The machine's a laptop meant for gaming, with 4 gigs of RAM and a Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Word's flakiness isn't always evident, but it does things like... Like if I just open the document and close it again without typing anything, Word asks me if I want to save my changes. I got paranoid. I have, in fact, combined it into one document and the Earth is still rotating so it wasn't as dangerous as I'd feared, but I did back it up in three different ways. Paranoia.
Kali:
And, in an abrupt change of direction, I've decided to go a different direction with this. Thank you, thank you VERY much, to those who offered to give up their time to help me make this into something I could sell. The people here on the Butcher board are some of the nicest anywhere, and I've traveled my share of the internet.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Kali on September 15, 2010, 04:08:39 AM ---Actually, the biggest temptation I'm fighting now is to query anyway. I like my synopsis and my query letter, and the first five pages are, I feel, polished enough to send. I know I want comments on some parts, though, and I have this terrible feeling that if I query now, the results will be nightmarish. I'll get the "We like it, send us the whole thing" and be completely elated only to have my heart crushed when they decline the manuscript because it wasn't polished enough. *shudder* Nightmarish, I say.
--- End quote ---
Definitely worth avoiding that if only for your blood pressure's sake.
--- Quote ---I have, in fact, combined it into one document and the Earth is still rotating so it wasn't as dangerous as I'd feared, but I did back it up in three different ways. Paranoia.
--- End quote ---
Three backups on two different sites is a minimum degree of safe backup IMO; I tend to have one copy on my writing laptop, one on my household's DVD-watching desktop, and one at a dedicated gmail account that exists for offsite backup purposes.
Enjorous:
--- Quote from: Kali on September 15, 2010, 06:22:50 AM ---And, in an abrupt change of direction, I've decided to go a different direction with this. Thank you, thank you VERY much, to those who offered to give up their time to help me make this into something I could sell. The people here on the Butcher board are some of the nicest anywhere, and I've traveled my share of the internet.
--- End quote ---
Howe3ver you decide to do it keep us posted on how its working for you. Because we're all pulling for you.
Figging Mint:
If that different direction still includes "getting more readers" as a waypoint, let me know.
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