I am pleased to report that A Theft of Bones has survived its first public outing. Almost all of my beta readers have now reported back and I was touched by the obvious time and energy they’d put into reading my manuscript.
Going into the beta read, I harbored a lurking fear that I’d fall flat on my face. I was afraid that the plot I’d so lovingly constructed would end up being utterly impenetrable to a normal audience, sending me back to the drawing board with my head slumped to my chest. Happily, that was not the case: both plot and characters passed muster.
For the most part, there was very little overlap within the beta readers’ comments. This is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it means that there’s not much that MUST be changed. If most of them had told me that chapter 3 was crap or character X was unbelievable, I’d have to believe them and make changes accordingly.
But in the absence of that kind of consensus, I’m left with a number of things that COULD be changed. Individually, they’re all good suggestions, but now I have to evaluate them in turn and decide whether or not to incorporate them. When doing so, I’ll have to keep the following things in mind:
(1) I can’t please everyone. I can spend months and months and months struggling to incorporate every single suggestion only to have agents reject my work. Even if AToB manages to get published, there will be people who think I should have done A, B, or C differently.
(2) There is no such thing as a perfect novel. This is not the best work I’ll ever do. It would be sad if it were because it would mean that I’d peaked at 26.
(3) Revising is important, but, eventually, I’m going to have to put my red pen down, take a deep breath, and send my manuscript out. I can’t get caught in an endless cycle of fine-tuning.
Codex Lochianus 