Somebody read my book!
Feb. 9th, 2005 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynAnd liked it, even!
Granted, this somebody is my father, who is arguably rather biased in my favor. But still! :)
He finished it last Wednesday, in fact, but tonight was the first time I talked to him about it. My father is an avid reader, but mostly of mysteries and the occasional sf; he doesn't usually read fantasy of any sort. He wouldn't've read Prophecy if I hadn't written it. But he said he found it quite engaging once he got into it. And I believe him, because he only took about five days to read it -- a pretty good clip to parse a 210,000 word manuscript.
While he admits it has faults, he is of the opinion that I ought to try to publish it straight away, rather than spending a lot more time trying to fix the things that are wrong with it. I don't think I'll be taking this advice; I'll probably sit on it for a few more months, maybe see what other comments I get back from readers. Then I'll revise it; fix some of the characterizations and maybe work on the ending.
But, in any case, I'm glad someone's read it. I'm not the only one who's read the ending anymore! I have someone I can talk to about it!
:D
Granted, this somebody is my father, who is arguably rather biased in my favor. But still! :)
He finished it last Wednesday, in fact, but tonight was the first time I talked to him about it. My father is an avid reader, but mostly of mysteries and the occasional sf; he doesn't usually read fantasy of any sort. He wouldn't've read Prophecy if I hadn't written it. But he said he found it quite engaging once he got into it. And I believe him, because he only took about five days to read it -- a pretty good clip to parse a 210,000 word manuscript.
While he admits it has faults, he is of the opinion that I ought to try to publish it straight away, rather than spending a lot more time trying to fix the things that are wrong with it. I don't think I'll be taking this advice; I'll probably sit on it for a few more months, maybe see what other comments I get back from readers. Then I'll revise it; fix some of the characterizations and maybe work on the ending.
But, in any case, I'm glad someone's read it. I'm not the only one who's read the ending anymore! I have someone I can talk to about it!
:D
Bwahahaha!
Date: 2005-02-10 05:11 pm (UTC)But you, of all people, have no excuse for feeling guilty! Goodness, you've been supporting Prophecy? for three years now; I'm hardly going to start complaining because you haven't found the time to read the whole thing again. :) (Well, the ending wouldn't be "again" but the other 180,000 words would be. You get the idea). Without you, there wouldn't be a a finished book for anyone to read. So don't feel guilty!
Incidentally, I did have a suggestion for you on the "bookmarking a file" thing: you could put a little string of characters in at the point where you stop reading, say: ****. Then you could just do a search for **** to find your last stopping place the next time you open it.
I have a hunch that too many of my beta-readers are hung up on the idea of commenting on the whole thing page-by-page, which is an insane task. My dad just read it from start to finish and wrote up comments on his overall impression when he was done. That's fine by me; I don't really need the second draft line-edited when I'm still thinking about developing characters better, adding or removing scenes, and otherwise changing the structure of the novel.
Re: Bwahahaha!
Date: 2005-02-10 06:41 pm (UTC)You know what? That's EXACTLY how I bookmark a file I'm editing! Asterisks and all! Okay, maybe not EXACTLY. I typically use 5 asterisks. Why 5? I have no idea. Habit, I guess. ;)