Friday, August 13, 2010

Mini progress report

The second draft of Chapter 4 is done. Yay! Now I get to work on Chapter 5, which, in my opinion, was one of the best chapters to begin with-- it has two of my favorite scenes in the book. I am excited about getting to work through it again.
So far I have managed to cut 3033 words from the manuscript and I don't miss any of them. I've only been cutting things I'm 100% convinced are extraneous; I could probably cut more in the long run, but I'd have to really start thinking about what I was doing. I don't want to cut too much and leave the text feeling dry and anemic.
I have been getting some great feedback from my test readers. It's so helpful to have more eyes on the manuscript. They tend to catch things that have blended into the scenery for me because I have read this stuff so many times by now.
It is, of course, never too late to become a test reader!
I am considering putting some excerpts up on the blog, but I'm not sure how that works vis a vis the submission process-- I don't know if it would affect my chances of getting published. I will have to look into it. Dear readers, do any of you know?

3 comments:

  1. No clue on the publishing issues, though I feel like if a publisher really objected you could agree to retroactively take down the content.

    One thing you might consider is looking into electronically copyrighting your work! I know http://creativecommons.org/ does a lot of that sort of thing, but I don't know how good it is at "you can't use any of this for any reason," which is probably what you'd want when going to publish your book.

    Happy hunting! :D

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  2. I don't think putting up samples would hurt your shot at getting published, though I might recommend you instead get someone to record a narration of a passage. You can get a lot across in an audio narration, it feeds better into the multitasking environment we've come to live in, and it protects you from any silly "previously printed elsewhere" clauses that some companies with particularly full of themselves lawyers might push.

    Disclaimer: I have never published more than a website or a podcast, though I have met someone who recorded an original audio book that found its way to a traditional book publisher and ultimately into print.

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  3. Thanks for the input! I think I might end up posting a short story set in the same continuity rather than a book excerpt-- I've gotten some emails saying that book excerpts online do not make some publishers happy. Of course, I'll have to write a short story first for this to be possible. :\

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