Play it Again, Rune

We mentioned that we would be revisiting the Music Novel to compile the critique comments. That has indeed begun, but before we did that we elected to do a complete read-through in order to start forming our own game plan for what needs to be done. And in saying, “we elected to do a complete read through,” what we mean is, “Jen made Kent read the entire manuscript to her.” (He didn’t mind, even though after a few nights his voice got very tired.)

Happily, our recent spring cleaning (it is, after all, a leap year ending in 6) meant we could get all the critique copies of the Music Novel organized so that the next phase will be as efficient as possible. Collating input from our group is one of the few stages of our process that we haven’t been able to optimize. It’s just inherently cumbersome. But we have some ideas for stuff to try this time, so it doesn’t take us a month to sift through it all.

It’s very interesting to return to this work after writing and outlining so much other stuff. It feels partly like a homecoming, seeing again all our familiar characters and getting into a groove with the story we know by heart. At the same time we now see things in it that were hidden to us before, which is exactly why we make a practice of laying things aside for a while. This way when we make edits, they’ll go deeper. The end result will be stronger.

Writing with a partner means there’s someone to share the note-taking as you mine the critique pile for gold, and if you’re lucky it means there’s someone who will read to you.