A Guinea Pig Audience

There are some things I really need to do more of:

• More ensemble shoots/entries
• Edge punch more wedding invitations

And while that may not seem like a lot of work, it sort of takes a lot of time to do that. Nevertheless, I’ve just been editing and wasting my life over papers printed on both sides. Over the last month, I’ve been leaving a chapter of my novel in the break room at work. Originally I was just going to have my coworkers read the first chapter so they could tell me what they thought, if it was intriguing enough for them to want to read more. I didn’t exactly plan on leaving more, on giving them the whole thing.

But then people came up and told me, “Well, you did what you wanted.”

And I was all, “What…?”

“I want to read more.”

So every Thursday I have to have a new chapter on that table in the back. Today I’ll be handing in my sixth, and it’s become sort of an obsession, making the time to accommodate editing, revising, editing again (x3), and then writing some feedback questions to go with the chapter. It’s become an adrenaline rush to me, getting this shit done, getting the feedback. Having the coworkers assist me has been wonderful, and even my boss is way into the story. We talk about Jonah all the time.

I’ve already had a few people ask for chapter copies as well, and while I love their interest, I don’t exactly know how to go about doing so. I don’t want to just distribute copies left and right, not to mention that the paper and ink involved in making those copies isn’t that cheap. I realize that friends and family may want to be involved in the guinea pig test audience thing, but I worry about sending out copies to every interested party. Plus, I’m also doing this for feedback, not just to share. This book is supposed to be what allows me to buy groceries while I’m sitting at home breastfeeding a baby sometime down the road, so it’s kind of a big deal.

If you are seriously interested in reading my work, however, please let me know and I’ll see what I can figure out to accommodate you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 10:54 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.