status update on editing and publishing 9/23/17

I'm revising my publishing estimate from Autumn/winter 2017 to at least spring of 2018... The Beta Reader phase took longer than expected, and based on the feedback, I think I'll have more editing to do than I had hoped. I'm contemplating adding a Developmental Editor phase too and coughing up the money , which could delay the release of the book even more. I'll take the estimate off the page headers and direct here to the blog instead.

Meeting with the 3rd of 3 beta readers tonight. From the first 2 beta readers I'd break the comments into 2 categories: Structural Story/plot comments, and writing style comments. There is about a 50-50 split between comments that I think I'll act on, and comments that I think I either disagree with or are a matter of personal taste in literature that I plan to ignore. The structural story/plot changes I mostly have ideas worked out for making changes and I think will be made relatively quickly and easily. It is the writing style issues that have me most concerned... go figure... a structural engineer who does well with the structure of a story, but maybe needs to work on how to communicate the story!

I wrote my novel having not read much literature since high school due to engineering books and building codes dominating my life. I intentionally wanted to write it without first devouring literature so that I made sure the story was mine and mine alone, and that I wasn't mimicking other authors. Since March or so when I finished the Beta reader draft, I've been intentionally "consciously uncoupling" myself from my book in order to allow myself to review it with fresh eyes. During this uncoupling time I've also been devouring famous literature to get a feel for what I do and do not like in my literature, and to get ideas of how to improve my own writing style. My opinions on some of this famous literature has varied wildly... some I've loved, some I've hated and have no idea why it is famous.