Category Archives: Tangled

12 December 2011 · 10:03 pm

Beta readers: a change of plan

Earlier this evening, I had the great pleasure of sending Part 3 (the final part) of  The Big Smoke to my beta readers. This is only a week behind the original deadline I set myself back in August, so I’m pretty happy with that.

However, in my original project schedule, I allocated time in between editing parts to go back and consider feedback from my beta readers on the previous part and make changes. That didn’t happen, mainly because it felt more natural to continue on with editing in a linear fashion rather than backtracking, and also because editing took longer than I’d expected. Especially Part Three. Part Three was a slog.

Don’t get me wrong – I did read the feedback from my beta readers, I just haven’t processed it fully yet. Now that Part Three is in the hands of my beta readers, that’s exactly what I plan to do.

I already know I’ll have some difficult decisions to make because my readers had quite different opinions about what works and what doesn’t, but I’m happy to say that overall my readers have really enjoyed what they’ve read so far (phew!). They’ve also had some fantastic insights about how I could make the story even better so I’m looking forward to mulling those suggestions over and deciding what to take on board.

In my original project schedule, I planned to distribute the whole manuscript to my second group of beta readers at this point too, meaning I would receive feedback from my first group on Part 3 and my second group on the whole manuscript at roughly the same time. Obviously, that’s not possible any more because I haven’t made changes to parts 1 and 2 yet.

But even if I had, I think that I would’ve decided to wait until I received feedback from my first group on Part 3 before sending the entire manuscript to my second group. Why? Because if there are major doozies /deal breakers in Part 3, I’d want my first group to let me know so I can fix them up before my second group starts reading. That way, my second group will (hopefully) get a much more polished version of the entire manuscript, rather than two-thirds polished and one-third good but ‘flawed’.

This means my beta reading stage will take longer than I’d first hoped, but I think it will be more valuable this way. Fingers crossed that’s the case!

Your turn

What do you think? Do you agree with my thoughts about drawing the beta reading process out or do you think I’m just trying to make myself feel better for not sticking to my original plan? (Feel free to be honest!) Have you done something similar with beta readers? If so, what were your experiences?

P.S. If you’re part of my second group of beta readers, expect an apologetic email about the delay coming your way soon! :)

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5 December 2011 · 11:02 pm

First major edit: complete!

Yes, you read correctly. I have edited the final word on the final page of The Big Smoke.

HOORAY!!!!

I am very excited, and I wish I could write a full blog post in honour of this momentous occasion, which occurred less than a minute ago. But it’s 11pm and I have to work tomorrow. So I shall tuck myself into bed and dream about celebrating instead. Good night! :-)

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27 November 2011 · 10:07 pm

Location: truth or fiction?

It’s been another hard week of editing Part Three of The Big Smoke, but I’ve managed to get through another 25% (or 13,600 words) and I’m feeling quietly confident I’ll have Part Three ready for my beta readers by my revised deadline of 12 December (fingers crossed!).

While reading Part Two, one of my beta readers asked me about my choice to have my two main characters, Seb and Ceara, come from fictional country towns in rural Queensland. My answer: I didn’t want to say they were from real country towns and then have people from those towns identify things that clearly didn’t fit with their town (from scenery to slang words).  The only country town I know intimately enough to write about is Gatton, my home town. But I didn’t want either of my characters to come from there because I didn’t want readers (particularly readers who know me) to think the story was auto-biographical (because it isn’t).

That was my original rationale. But after my beta reader asked the question, I’ve been revisiting the decision in my mind. I know that I really enjoy books that have real settings, particularly if I’m familiar with those settings. But do I enjoy them more than books with imaginary settings? I’m not 100% decided, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t think it’s a huge factor for me. I mean, I love reading books set in Brisbane, my current home (like Nick Earls’ The Fix and Ian Wynne’s Gavel), but I also enjoy reading books with fictional-but-still-realistic settings (like Christopher Currie’s The Ottoman Motel).

I’m keen to hear your thoughts. Does it make a difference to your enjoyment of a book if the settings are real or imaginary? The Big Smoke is realistic fiction – does this make a difference? Meaning, are you happy to read about imaginary settings in fantasy but not realistic fiction? Or does genre not change your opinion?

Also, many of my settings are real (like the city of Brisbane, where most of the book takes place). Would you prefer settings to be consistently real or imaginary, or does that not matter to you? And finally, do you think it would be worth the extra research involved to have my main characters come from real country towns or do you think fictional-but-still-realistic settings are good enough?

I love hearing other readers’ and writers’ opinions on things like this, so please let me know what you think!  :-)

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20 November 2011 · 10:10 pm

Past the halfway mark

Finally! I’ve passed the halfway mark in my edit of Part Three of The Big Smoke. It’s been a real slog, this last part. Much harder than the first two.

Yuck!

I should’ve expected it, really. When I was writing parts one and two, I went back and edited frequently. But with Part Three, I ploughed ahead regardless of the rubbish that came out. So, naturally, the standard of writing isn’t quite the same. Thankfully, amongst the rubbish, there are some gems. It’s just a matter of putting a peg on my nose and sorting through the awful stuff to find them.

I’m pretty happy with the passages that are emerging, but the editing process is taking much longer than I’d anticipated. At this stage, I’m thinking my goal of having Part Three ready for my beta readers by 5 December is a little ambitious. After all, that’s only two weeks away and I’ll definitely need to do another proofread before I send it off. With all of the changes I’ve been making, I’m sure the writing is littered with typos. And nobody wants to read that!

I’m hoping that another week will be enough and I’ll be able to distribute Part Three by 12 December, but time will tell whether that’s achievable. To give myself the best shot, I think I need to stick to one blog post a week until Part Three is complete. But don’t be glum, I have another crazy awesome picture to make up for my lack of posts…

80s bogans!

Yep, we get invited to a lot of fancy dress parties… heaps of fun! :)

How about you? How are you going against your goals and deadlines?

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24 October 2011 · 9:09 pm

A new working title!

You’ll have to forgive me. I’m a bit grumpy tonight. On my way home from work, I missed my normal train and unthinkingly got on the next one, not realising it was express. I was listening to my iPod and reading blogs on my mobile, so I missed all the warnings and only realised there was a problem when we starting sailing past stations. I watched out the window as we flew past mine. And the next 12. Yes, that’s right, the train didn’t stop for another 12 stations. So a 30-minute one-way train trip turned into a 90-minute return train trip. Yes, it was completely my fault but still. Frustrating much?! GAH!!!!

Okay, I feel better now. Thanks for letting me vent. Moving on…

You may have noticed I didn’t post last night even though Sunday is my regular posting night. I blame Suzanne Collins for that. If she hadn’t made The Hunger Games so ridiculously addictive and unputdownable, I would have put it aside and kept to my schedule.

But hey, I’m a writer. And I write because I love stories. And The Hunger Games is one damn impressive story. I’ll do a proper review of it soon, but let me just say this – if you’re a bit slow on the uptake like me and haven’t yet read The Hunger Games, remedy that immediately. You won’t be disappointed.

Loving my new toy!

And to make the reading experience all the more exciting, it was the first book I’ve read on my new Kindle. Squeee! I’ve been umm’ing and ahh’ing about whether to buy a Kindle for a while now, and so when some wonderful girlfriends bought me a sizeable Amazon gift voucher for my birthday, I knew the time had come. I was worried that I wouldn’t like reading on a Kindle but I love it. LOVE it. I’ll do a full post about my thoughts once I’ve read a few more books on it. Stay tuned…

By now you’re probably wondering what the heck my headline has to do with this post. Perhaps I’ve left the most exciting news till last. I have a new working title for my novel-in-progress!

As my regular readers know, I love my previous working title, Tangled, but I believe that Disney has spoiled it for me. So, after a lengthy conversation at work with my awesome colleagues Laura and Joe, I’ve changed the title to… The Big Smoke! I really like it for a number of reasons, but I don’t want to tell you what they are because I’d rather hear what you think without skewing your judgement. So…. what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Indifferent? What does it tell you about the book?

I sent Part 2 of said novel-in-progress off to my beta readers yesterday and I’m looking forward to their feedback on the new title and of course the 43,000-odd words they’ll be reading. They’ve already given me some wonderful, insightful feedback on Part 1, which is helping to guide me as I go forth and edit Part 3. Not far to go now!

So yeah, that’s me this week. What’s happening in your world? And don’t forget to tell me what you think of The Big Smoke as a title!

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9 October 2011 · 8:44 pm

Finding balance

For the past two weeks I’ve been a lady of leisure, on holidays from work and the day-to-day hustle and bustle. I spent the first ten days road tripping around northern New South Wales and Sydney with my delightful husband (heaps of fun). I then spent the remainder of my holidays at home with a husband with man-flu (not so fun).

In case you’re interested, here are a couple of photos from our time in Sydney.

In front of the opera house

In front of the opera house

The Gap

The Gap, Watsons Bay

One of the best things about road tripping (apart from the scenery), was that I could edit along the way – when I was the passenger, not the driver, obviously! One of the only good things about being on holidays with a husband with man flu was plenty of time at home, which I spent – you guessed it – editing.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve managed to edit 32,000 words of Tangled and cross the halfway mark. That’s very exciting (I did a little happy dance in my pyjamas when I crossed the threshold), but I still have another 21,000 words to edit by 24 October in order to have part 2 of Tangled ready for my beta readers by the due date in my project schedule. Ideally, I’d like to proof read part 2 once more before I send it to my readers. But given that I’m heading back to full time work tomorrow, that’s a pretty big ask.

And to make things a little more challenging, my husband and I are starting a competition tomorrow (just between each other) to see who can get into the best shape in ten weeks. Winning this competition will unfortunately require exercise – something I haven’t made much time for since I started this blog in January. To be brutally honest, for the past ten months blogging has replaced jogging and my butt is starting to look like the chair it’s been parked in. I need this competition to get me out of that chair!

So what does all of this mean? It means that somehow, I need to find a better balance between novel editing, exercising, blogging, working, and having a life.  To achieve this, I need (among other things) to scale back on my blogging a little. I can hear your gasps of anguish and despair already, but don’t worry, I’ll still post twice a week – just not three times or more like I have been recently.

My new blogging schedule

Sunday night (AEST) will be:

  • a progress update, discussion about writing technique, industry spotlight or book review (in other words, whatever has taken my fancy about writing or reading that week).

Thursday night (AEST) will alternate between:

Wish me luck!

Your turn

Have you made any changes to achieve balance in your life recently? Or do you have any fun stories about failing to achieve balance? Please share. :-)

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18 September 2011 · 10:41 pm

WiP Part 1: off to beta readers!

Before I get onto the subject of tonight’s post, I just wanted to say a big HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to my wonderful husband, Mark. Seven years ago today, we promised to spend the rest of our lives together and I’m so glad we did. I was a month shy of 21 when we tied the knot, and Mark was 24. We may have been young, but we knew what we were doing. Here’s some photos from our special day:

The wedding party

Cally on her wedding day

Wedding: sitting among the flowers

Oh the memories! :-)

Okay, enough reminiscing. On to tonight’s topic! I sent the first part of Tangled, my novel-in-progress, off to my Beta Reader Group One peeps tonight. It’s quite an exciting and scary feeling. Mostly exciting though. I’ve been working on this novel for so long, I’m really looking forward to hearing people’s thoughts about it.

I thought you might be interested to hear how I’ve approached this stage of my beta reading, so I’ll give you a look at the email I’ve sent my beta readers, which includes a link to my purpose-built reader survey.

Hi there

Thanks again for offering to beta read Tangled. I really appreciate the time and energy it takes to provide considered feedback. Tangled Part 1 (about 45K) is attached! This is coming to you a week earlier than I originally indicated, however if you can still have your feedback to me by 17 October, that would be great. Feel free to get it to me as soon as you like though. :-)

You can go about providing feedback however you feel most comfortable. I’d really appreciate it if you could fill in this survey I’ve created, but if you find surveys stifling, please feel free to ignore it. At the least, it will provide you with a guide about the type of feedback I’m looking for.

.

In addition to the survey, I’d appreciate more nitty-gritty feedback marked on the manuscript (either in tracked changes in Word or scribbled on a hard copy – I’m happy to pay for postage). Please mark any spelling or grammar errors, passages that read awkwardly, and passages that make you smile or cringe (either because of what’s going on or because of the quality of the writing!). I’m just as interested in the passages you like as the ones you don’t, because it’s always good to know what’s actually working!

Please remember, I’m after your honest opinion, so don’t be afraid to tell me what you really think. If you have any concerns about anything I’ve said here, please just let me know.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Thanks
Cally

Your turn

What do you think of the survey? Too much? Too little? How are you going with your own writing? Please share. :-)

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8 September 2011 · 3:55 pm

First campaigner challenge: the door swung open…

I'm a platform-building campaigner badgeSorry guys, no ‘I Wish I Wrote That’ this week. Instead, I’m posting you something (hopefully) even better!

The awesome Rachael Harrie has issued the first challenge for those of us participating in her current writers’ platform-building campaign. The challenge is to write a flash fiction story (in any format) in 200 words or less, excluding the title. We must begin the story with the words, “The door swung open” (which are included in the word count).

My attempt is an excerpt from Tangled (my novel-in-progress), edited to meet the word limit and make sense on its own. Hope you enjoy it!

Not the best start

The door swung open as I hurried into the bathroom. I looked up to see my flatmate Robert reaching for the towel rack, completely naked and dripping with water. His eyes widened as his hands moved to cover himself.
I stood frozen for a moment, then spluttered an apology. My face burned as I closed the door and ran to my room. My heart was beating like I’d sprinted a kilometre. I wished my bed would swallow me whole.
Inexplicably, I started laughing. I’d just seen Robert nude! He was normally so arrogant, I never could’ve imagined him that vulnerable.
I couldn’t deal with seeing him again so I stayed in my room until the house grew quiet. If I was running late before, it was one hundred times worse now. So I crammed an hour’s worth of getting ready into ten minutes, skipping breakfast, washing my hair, and shaving my legs.
I set foot on the campus with seconds to spare. As I approached the theatre, I told myself there was nothing to be nervous about. Everything was going perfectly. After all, I’d always wanted to start uni with a gurgling stomach and legs as hairy as a gorilla.

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28 August 2011 · 10:53 pm

WiP Part 1 editing deadline: done and dusted!

***For my readers in the path of Hurricane Irene, I’m thinking of you. Batten down, be safe and I look forward to hearing that you’re doing well.***

As my headline suggests, I have beaten my ambitious deadline of editing Part 1 of Tangled by more than a week. Not only that, I actually extended Part 1 by 12K, so I’ve edited a LOT more than I thought I’d be able to.  This weekend alone, I edited 26K, which probably explains the square eyes and dazed brain…

This was my work station today.

Work station

My work station

Yes, those are tweezers. It was breezy on the deck and I couldn’t find another bulldog clip.

In summary, I’ve reduced 62K down to 46K – that’s a whopping 24%. And thus, the size of Tangled Part 1 (which I will soon be providing to beta readers) will be 46K (or thereabouts).

While I’m on the beta-reading topic, I’ve made some progress since I put out a request last week. I had a great deal of interest (thanks everyone!), so I’ve decided to do two rounds of beta reading. The first group will receive the manuscript in three parts, and the second will receive the whole thing in one hit – in about December, if my beta-reading project schedule is accurate.

Beta-reading project schedule

My beta-reading project schedule (click for full size)

If you’re one of those gorgeous, amazing, delightful people who volunteered to beta read Tangled, I’ll be emailing you shortly to see which group you’d like to be in. I’ve also decided that since I’ll be receiving quite a bit of feedback, I’m going to develop a survey for my beta readers (like this guy did). This will help guide my readers on what I’m looking for and ensure I get feedback in a consistent format. Beta readers will still be able to provide feedback beyond the survey scope, but hopefully the survey will capture the majority of comments.

So, this is all pretty exciting for me! As you know, I’m new to this beta reading caper, so I’m open to any thoughts or suggestions about how best to manage this stage. Check out my beta reading project schedule (which is subject to change) and let me know if you think it’s realistic. Let me know what you think about a beta reader survey. Tell me I should go to bed because I’m not making any sense…

Oh, one more thing before I go. Does anyone know of freeware that has similar functionality to MS Project? That would be heaps better than doing my project schedule in Excel.

Hooray! Too much coffee! :-D

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21 August 2011 · 10:05 pm

Seeking: young adult beta readers

First page

Refine, refine, refine...

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who has offered to beta read Tangled. I now have enough beta readers. HOWEVER, if you’re aged between 15-18 years old and regularly read contemporary realistic YA fiction, I’d still love to hear from you because you’re smack bang in my target audience!

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, I set myself a deadline of 5 September for micro-editing the first 50K of my novel-in-progress Tangled. I’m excited to report that I’m still on track to achieve that goal, having edited 30.5K to date.

My progress has got me thinking – what do I want to do once I’ve finished this round of editing? And the answer (as you probably guessed by the headline) is that I want to hand it over to beta readers. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, beta readers are people who read a manuscript in draft form and provide feedback on what works and what doesn’t. This feedback will inform future rounds of editing before (hopefully) publication. (You can read more about the role of beta readers in this marvellous post at the Open Vein.)

Because Tangled is such a hefty manuscript (175K to be exact), I think it would be best if I provided it to beta readers in parts. That way, I can start getting feedback sooner than later and people aren’t confronted with the whole book to critique in one hit. Now, before you run screaming at the word count, let me say that 175K was the final word count of the first draft. Of the chapters I’ve edited so far, I’ve reduced their word count by an average of 28%. If I continue at this rate, the word count will come down to about 126K. (Maths isn’t my strong point so if this don’t sound right, let me know!).

So, this is me putting the call out. Are you interested in beta reading Tangled (find out more about Tangled)? If so, keep reading…

Who I’m looking for

  • I’m seeking people who regularly read young adult contemporary fiction.
  • Ideally, I’d love to have a couple of beta readers who are in my target audience, i.e. 15-18 year olds. If I could get feedback from at least one girl and one guy from this age group, I’d be ecstatic.
  • I’m looking for people who are willing to make a commitment to read and provide feedback on the whole manuscript over time (and have an ongoing conversation about suggested changes and ideas).
  • I’m still deciding how many beta readers I’d like as I can see benefits to having a few (more detailed conversations) and to having a lot (able to see whether feedback is consistent or unique to one individual). Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

What I’m looking for

  • Honest feedback. I’m not looking for a pat on the back, I’m looking for genuine thoughts on what works and what doesn’t.
  • Feedback on all manner of things, such as:
    • Are the characters believable? Relatable? Likeable?
    • Does the plot move at a good pace? Does it ever lag or go too fast?
    • Are there any plot holes, character inconsistencies or sentences that jar?
    • Is there anything about the story that you particularly love or loathe?
    • At the end of the first part, where do you think the story is heading from here? What do you hope happens? What do you think WILL happen?
    • Anything else you feel I should know.

OR if you’d don’t have time to provide detailed feedback but would like to read it and provide general thoughts, I’d be happy for that too.

What are the timeframes?

  • I hope to have the first part ready by 15 September (it will be about 40K if my current reduction rate continues).
  • I’d like to receive feedback by mid-November. By this point, I hope to have finished editing part two. But before I send out part two to my beta readers, I will consider the feedback provided for part one. Depending on what feedback I get, I may need to revise part one and make subsequent changes to part two before I send out a second round.
  • My overall deadline to have the manuscript 100% complete is mid-February next year. Time will tell whether this is achievable!

Your turn

  • Would you like to be a beta reader? If so, please comment on this post or email me at callyjackson at gmail dot com.
  • I’m new to this beta-reading request caper, so if there’s anything here that stands out as a bad idea, please let me know. :-)

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