Chapter 5 is up, for those of you reading along.
I’m having an interesting problem with this particular novel. Normally, I ask my readers not to comment on the quality of the writing because I’m posting raw draft and folks are pretty good about respecting that. There’s usually one person that I have to remind, once, and then it doesn’t happen again.
With this particular novel, I’m getting a higher percentage of comments about the writing quality than usual, even with warnings, and I think it’s because the writing is uneven. Some of these scenes are coming out of a published story, after all, and some are totally raw. Of course readers are getting whiplash from the two writing styles. But… I need them to not comment on it.
When I get comments on the writing quality, especially things like, “this scene isn’t as tight” or “this sentence was awkward” or “you use this word a lot” it makes me self-conscious. I slow down and start obsessing over stuff that I shouldn’t be thinking about at this stage. Right now I just need to be getting the broad shape of the story down.
It’s an unexpected side effect of the expanding an existing work.
I hope that the few comments I’ve made are more along the lines of what you need.
I did make a comment about the change when I read the first completely new chapter, and I apologize, it was actually meant more as a reflection about me, and as appreciation of how beautifully you do polish when you get to that stage. Sorry if it was distracting, I didn’t mean it to be, but hope that I am managing to keep my comments, such as they are, in the realm of what you are looking for.