Beta Testing

It really didn’t take us long at all to put the finishing touches on the first draft of Sibling of Music Novel. We were done by last Saturday. Perhaps we should call it a first-ish draft. It hasn’t had a full edit, or even major rewrites, but it did get a little bit of extra attention in a couple of places. We knew a few items were lacking, so we dealt with those, and now the manuscript is in the hands of some trusted beta readers.

In a move that was somewhat controversial in the Writing Cave, we opted to not reread the book before handing it off. It’s technically resting before we edit it, and Kent was concerned that if we read the whole thing, instead of just poking at it here and there, that we’d refamiliarize ourselves with it too much. The whole point of letting the work rest is to forget how it’s supposed to go, forget what you were trying to accomplish with each scene and sentence. It’s the closest an author can come to experiencing their own work the way a reader will, and is a great way to spot parts that aren’t working. Jen saw the wisdom of Kent’s argument: she just really wanted to read the book because it’s good.

Every place we poked our noses in to make the small adjustments and additions drew us in and made us want to keep reading. That’s a good sign. It’s a good book, and it will still be good a couple of months from now when we come back to it with fresh eyes.