So, last week I finally finished the first edit on my first novella. I (gulp) submitted to beta readers. The first response was quick: a couple of typos but otherwise my "manuscript is perfect." First bit of good news! Next day a writer colleague critiqued the first chapter: WHOA! The comments were not complimentary and picked into the nitty gritty. A lot of great advice but I'm not used to such cut and dry criticism. Took me a day to recover but then went through and edited my way through some of the comments. Reader #3: complimentary again (thank goodness). Still awaiting a couple other betas to come through.
In the meanwhile, I've been trying to finish my first full length novel. It started as my first NaNoWriMo work and I've been spending the past week filling in the transitions and holes in the story. I'm pretty proud of some of the writing, but boy is it hard to keep it up for 50,000+ words! I will have to go through and edit harder (did a rough edit this week as I was filling in). I'm debating to put it out to betas first because I want to personally walk away from it for a bit before the hard edit.
The other thing I've been working on this past week (I've been busy) is some short works. You can check some out on my new "Prose" page. The short piece "Crushed" is non-fiction, though the names have been changed. "Mission Accomplished" was my first attempt at flash fiction and is based on a photo given as a writing prompt in my online writers group. One of my Facebook friends has mentioned assembling a collection of short stories for a charity publication and I've been considering this as well. Short works have been fun, but I'm still learning about that format of writing.
