Progress Update VII

Ah, it's the most wonderful time of the year.

No not Christmas you silly goose! The time when I fill you in on how this little project of mine has been progressing.

And just what have I been up to for the past couple of months you might ask? Well, to be perfectly honest with you "damage control" might be the polite term.

Round Two has continued to be a FusterCluck (patent pending) but thankfully that's more due to the fickle hand of fate than any lack of enthusiasm from my betas. Looking at how crazy this Round has been I can't begin to imagine how much more difficult it would be if I had people being rude or unresponsive like I've heard of some other people dealing with online. I've been truly blessed with polite, engaged readers for my Round Two and while it's been a bit of a revolving door when it comes to who can stick around and who has to bow out early, I'm kind of in awe at my luck so far.

"Why, John," you might say. "How can you feel lucky when your well thought out (and entirely not overly optimistic) time table for this Round has been blown so far out of the water it's taken up orbit around Jupiter's second moon?" Simple, dear reader: perspective.

You see, I'm fully aware of the commitment I've asked of all my betas as well as the necessities to deal with life as needed and, let's be honest here, dear reader, my betas in Round Two haven't exactly had an easy go of it which is saying something as my Round One betas got to deal with the madness that was the Covid-19 outbreak (whee!).

So, yes, round two continues to be a slog, but progress has been made! Breakthroughs have been had! There's been an uptick in responses and while there's still quite a few betas that are being blindsided by life most have at least tentative timetables for getting back on track so that's a plus. All things considered, though. It could be worse!

Most "author hopefuls" start their blog at square one whereas I...well...I started that after I was done revising version 3.0 of my manuscript and was knee deep in the beta process (which I guess is a good thing?). No, no it definitely is. Writing is fun but crafting a narrative is hard work and the writing part is actually done at this point which is weird to think about. We've simply slipped into the wholly unsexy side of things, the flares of caffeine fueled imagination replaced by data collection, analysis, and questionnaires (Oh, so many questionnaires!). It will all make the overall story better, of course, but it's a little less exciting than announcing to you I've successfully wrapped up a chapter or overcame a certain thematic difficulty.

Still, any progress is good progress and things have quieted down enough that I at least have things organized where before it was all a slapdash attempt to put out fires. And that's something!

It is, in fact, something.

So what do I hope for going forward? Well, now that we're exiting marriage season and the weather (hopefully) cools down into perfect book reading weather I hope everyone get's on a roll! With any luck we'll have a few good crisp autumn mornings where cozying up with a stout blanket, a hot drink, and a questionable manuscript sounds like a good idea and we can get rocking and rolling. Is that wishful thinking? Perhaps. But, hey, what is a man without his aspirations?

So there we are, dear reader. The raging inferno of chaos has died down to a more manageable dumpster fire and I now await to see if it's embers will fade entirely or are merely waiting to flare up again. Either way I appreciate you following along, not to mention reading until the end of this little example of self indulgence! Hopefully I'll have more exciting news for you soon but, failing that, here's hoping the madness is at least fun to watch from the outside.

Until next time.