Night before last I went back to working on my novel Headshots. Back around July 20 I sent it out to five beta readers and have been anxiously waiting for their reviews.

I received the first one back from my cousin Sue. She is also a writer. She gave me a detailed review via a Word document, with color coding for suggested changes. I scanned it to see the nature of the comments, and saved it to my computer in The Dungeon.

The second review to come back was from my Internet writing friend, Veronica. This was a partial review, sent as a PDF document. She pointed out a number of things that need fixing, as well as a few things that were good. I read her comments, and saved it. Today my inbox had another doc from her, with the next section she’s completed.

The third review I received was from high school/college friend Gary. He’s not a writer, but is well versed in literary issues based on interest and experience. He sent me a Word document with his comments—not the text marked-up, but his comments alone. He noted typos by page (all three noted typos, actually), noted some areas where more description would do some good, and pointed out a few things that seemed incongruous to him, things that stretched believability too much.

Wednesday night I started the process using Gary’s review. I went through and fixed the typos he’d caught. I then read through his critique in considerable detail, trying to see what things I needed to tackle. Alas, I wasted some time, listened to some music, and didn’t have much time to write. Last night was different. Yes, I wasted some time and listened to some doo-wop, but I also knuckled down and tackled Gary’s substantive comments. I “yellowed them out” on the screen as I did them. Some, I felt, were things I couldn’t do, as they would change something too much. These I “greened-out”. By the end of an hour I didn’t have all his comments answered, but most of them. I still have a few descriptions to add—or not, as I look at them.

Tonight I hope to finish with Gary’s, and move on to one of the others, probably Sue’s.  By the end of my writing time on Sunday I hopefully will have all three completed, and maybe a book ready to go! Hoping to have it published before baseball season is over.