State of the Manuscript - 9/18/2024

Welcome to my monthly update on the state of my manuscript for my debut novel.

I sent my manuscript out to a beta reader a few weeks ago, which was equal parts thrilling and terrifying. It means I'm one step closer to the book being published, but it's also the first time I've shared my writing with another person. I felt like my story was good, but I couldn't say I was 100% confident in it, since I had no way of knowing how an outsider viewed it.

I received the feedback from my beta reader a few days ago and have been slowly reading through the notes she gave me. She provided some very helpful critique and brought a few things, good and bad, to my attention that I hadn't noticed when I was writing.

So, where do things stand now?

I've started making revisions to the manuscript, based off of her feedback and some ideas that occurred to me while the draft was with the beta reader. It's funny how I thought I was "done" with the draft, but the moment it was in someone else's hands, I had an influx of ideas and improvements.

My method for revising is to re-write the manuscript, with the finished draft and the notes my beta reader provided for reference, starting from Page 1. I feel like that level of detail will make sure I don't miss anything important structurally, or have easy-to-fix errors, such as typos or inconsistencies in how a name is spelled.

My current word count is 11,779 words.