The fourth – and final pre-Beta – edit of The Watching is complete! I’m still not satisfied with the Prologue – it serves a purpose, but I’m not sure how well. It might be better to let the reader put the world together as they read the novel, but at least for now I think a primer might be worth the effort.
I’ve come in at a little under 90,000 words, but that could easily change following incorporation of any feedback that I receive.
Beta Readers.
Right now I have just the one Beta Reader who’s been kind enough to put forward his time, but I’m going to be moving the manuscript to Critiquematch and making it available for Beta Readers there.
It’s a first novel and I’m actually quite nervous, so it’s going to be an interesting process.
How to Critiquematch?
This is my question. Once I’ve figured it out I’ll set out my process here and give links so you can check it out.
My only real obstacle is finding time when I can access the computer to get this done. It’s not been a year for ease of action. Deaths, COVID, broken foot, about an extra twenty-pounds of fat, eczema breakouts and falling further behind with the farm work every day. It hasn’t been easy to organize and plan anything, simply reacting to whatever life threw at me at the time.
At one point in my little ‘positivity journal’ I noted that it seemed less like getting my life back on the rails as building new rails underneath it.
Up Next…
The week after this upcoming week is Thanksgiving, which I’m seriously looking forward to. This hasn’t been a happy year, so I’m determined to make the holiday season as festive and joyful as possible
Other than that, I still have notes to collate for Lock Out Tag Out before I can start outlining proper – and there’s still at least two books I want to go through: The Kikuchi Diary, and Live Not by Lies, the latter of which may have absolutely nothing to offer, but judging by comments by Amazon reviewers may be an absolute gold mine.
All of this, save for Thanksgiving, is a lower priority than getting The Watching set up for review on Critiquematch.
The only other challenge is trying to set up this blog post to publish on time. The last one was supposed to publish on the following Monday morning as usual, but it published straight away while giving me an error message. We’ll see.
Anyway, stay safe, wear a mask, wash your hands and have a great week!
Categories: Beta Phase, Beta Readers, Critiquematch, The Old Man, Work Update
Andrew Wellington 
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