Day 115

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

04 Jul 2016

Ugh, feedback! Starting to get a little bit of beta reader feedback on the first five chapters, and although I’d intended to batch it all and review after finishing the full first edit, it’s not quite that simple. Receiving feedback is so not fun, but clearly necessary, which perhaps makes it a little easier. For example, in my attempts to reduce the weight of description/backstory/worldbuilding dragging the first chapter down, I inadvertently deleted a paragraph that identified Cole as a female. Hugely blush worthy; that’s a super awkward chunk of story to read about a guy… like, what’s he getting all worked up about??! I like the idea of teasing out bits of the story as you go, but the feedback I’ve got so far seems to be indicating that it’s just confusing, and any mystery or tension is being lost to painful rereading and trying to puzzle out what’s going on - not good! But I’ll try to leave that behind and push forward with the edits; a little over halfway there~~!

Travel planning is stalling a bit; I’ve pretty much got Krakow pinned down, which leaves 3/4 of the trip left to do, and I’m running out of steam and time! Also mildly panicking about financial stuff - will it be too frustrating? Can I get enough work pinned down? Can I focus and produce enough in a day to actually get by? I do have some buffer, but the point at which I’ll need answers is accelerating toward me, and it’s hard not to cringe. The part-time thing with historic site/museum/library etc. is appealing, but may be too frustrating/too distracting and consuming/too little money/too overqualified to get hired?? - and bartending is an option that may or may not be more appealing, but is made less pleasant by the apparent fact that they refer to female bartenders in the UK as barmaids??!!! Blech~~ Although, maybe if I wore a costume and pretended it was historical reenactment or something?? Like those anime where they get stuck in a medieval-fantasy flavoured game world?? But I’d rather be a craftsman or warrior in any case… Guess we’ll see. But it’s becoming clearer that the point at which I’ll see any money from this novel is pretty far in the future (/never…)

Monday

Start time: 12:00 pm

Location: couch/livingroom

Drinking: black tea with cinnamon sticks & vanilla bean

Soundtrack: cat snoring

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