Progress Update V
Ah, update time. The tete-a-tete where I debrief you on how this little project of mine is going.
"Why, John," you might ask. "How are things coming?"
Well, dear reader, for better or worse becoming one of my betas appears to be something of a lucky rabbit's foot: every single person in Round Two has either stumbled upon their dream pet, job, or significant other, or gotten engaged, pregnant, or promoted.
Think about that for a second. Every. Single. Person.
Now, I know “life, uh, finds a way” but those are some impressive numbers! Matthew McConaughey in Wolf of Wallstreet himself would be impressed! It's like I'm Dane Cook in the movie Good Luck Chuck: that timeless 2005 Hollywood classic where a dude is cursed to cause every woman he dates to discover their true love in the first dude they meet after their relationship with him ends. Now I obviously don't have it THAT bad but Dane Cook also ended up with Jessica Alba in that scenario so...yeah. I guess I'm waiting for the author equivalent of Jessica Alba...or just Jessica Alba, quite frankly, but I digress: with such monumental life events occurring to quite literally everyone I’m working with, as well as the general understanding that people have more immediate concerns (see: war/inflation/housing crisis/coming to terms with the fact that they have, in fact, experienced the miracle of child birth), progress for Round Two hasn't exactly been the definition of "swift."
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Some betas understandably had to opt out of the process in order to deal with the added responsibility/wedding planning/childcare that suddenly earned a permanent slot in their day planners. You gotta be happy for people when that all happens (honestly how can you not?) but for a while there I was doing quite a bit of dosey-doing to balance checking in, congratulating them, thanking them for their time, logging their existing feedback, and then setting about trying to "onboard" new R2 Betas to try to keep things up and running.
That being said the overall progression for R2 is still better than expected, given the circumstances, with roughly half of all betas having finished out. That may seem underwhelming but keep in mind, dear reader, that the half that has completed the manuscript consists almost exclusively of the "OG" R2 Betas that remain- and while the "newbloods" arrived a little later to this particular party they’re still making good progress!
Of course it's impossible to predict just how fast people will respond, or what new crisis will cause mass panic (this decade seems to love surprising us, no?) but given the headway made by the “O.Gs” and the expedient responses from some of the "newbloods" I'm still cautiously optimistic R2 could be wrapped up by the end of spring or summer at the latest (I'm sure I have just jinxed myself by stating this in spectacular fashion). Once R2 wraps up I'll begin the completely unsexy job of analyzing data to see if there are any problem points or if people are picking up what I'm trying to lay down for story beats. Once that is finished I can decided whether it's time for a Round 3 of Beta or if it's time to do one final pro-level edit and begin the process of trying to find an agent (yay?).
Either way I certainly have enough to keep me busy and (mostly) out of trouble. I'll keep you updated as things develop. More importantly, thank you for giving enough of a shit to read this to the end, dear reader. I bet you're the kind of odd duck that reads author acknowledgements in the back of the book. I like people like you (we can be friends).
Until next time.