Requesting All Readers:

How would you like to help an (unpublished) author by editing an book? Or at least a scene for one I should say.

Here's the background:

For my summer writing course we were asked to pick a scene and show it to the class. I picked my scene, showed it, and now I'm supposed to turn in the final draft. But it's not that simple for me considering this is much more than an average homework assignment. I chose (as we were allowed) to use a scene from my sequel to the first book I'm working on. Originally this scene was in the first novel, Changing Kathryn, but I cut it and am currently in the process of moving it to my sequel (in progress). Now I'm posting this scene to my blog, though now I ask that if you are so willing, to read it and critique it, too. No rush as this scene is due tomorrow and it is as good as I feel it will get for my final draft. But when it comes to being in my book, I want to make sure it works.

At the very least, I do request of your own free will of course, that if you would be so kind as to leave a simple comment about it on the scene's site that would be awesome. Or at the very very least, please click one of the "reaction" buttons below THIS current post (the articles/short stories I post separately do not have such buttons).

Now, here's the deal: If you're just reading this to read it, that's fine. But in the way of critiquing, if you so wish to do so but have never done this before, here are a few ideas for what to comment on:

• Errors
• Legibility (hard to read/understand v. easy to read/understand)
• Likability (hated it v. loved it) 
• Things to elaborate on 
• Or things I should detract from
• Things to delete
• Or things I should add

If you have any questions, leave a comment comment, or you can email me here: kaysregan@gmail.com 

--- UPDATE 10/17/17 ---

This is now a closed discussion. No other edits or changes will be received. Thank you for understanding, I apologize for the inconvenience. And I have certainly appreciated all the help! 

New Blog Addition!

I have made it possible for you to now know whenever I put up a new post via my "Follow Me by Email" system. It's simple! If you want to know whenever I post something just type in your email address and click submit. It's literally that easy! And then you won't always have to keep checking back to see if I'm keeping up with my blog, as that can get very tedious very quickly. And besides, it's fun to stay up to date so you don't get bogged down trying to catch up, either.

Happy readings!
Kay R.

P.S. (7/1/2016 @ 7:24 p.m.) - Thought I should also add I just finished making a few changes. I renamed my list of pages from just "Pages" to "Helpful Pages". I then moved several posts I had originally added to my blog's homepage over to it's own page, listing them under the "Helpful Pages" section to help clean up the look of my blog a bit. I then removed some posts that were originally under this section to the homepage as it made more sense this is where they would be. So if there's anything that you read originally that you want to again but it's not where you thought it would be, that's probably why. Fortunately I have a detailed blog archive, a clean list of "Helpful Pages", plus the "search my blog" tool, so hopefully now it won't be hard to find a specific post again.

Figuring it Out

I'm finally beginning to feel solid in my manuscript again. It's so helpful that I'm in a writing class over the summer where we get to spotlight our material for each other and help everyone out with ideas, and making sure we're staying on track with what we want from our books.

Once this version is done I'll be going through and editing out the minor errors, fix some stuff that my editor and I were working on, then do a mass send-out for anyone who wants one. I'm super excited about this final part as this will feel like this is really it. I'll then gather up the feedback and from there group all the manuscripts I sent out together and go through a mass revision process this way. I think this will really help so I can see what worked for some, what didn't work, and ultimately this will be the best feedback system. Unfortunately the hard part will be finding people who can really take time out of their schedule to really do this seriously. But I'll figure out how to get a system together that works.

Fortunately I've got time, and a lot of interested readers, and most importantly: a manuscript that feels solid once more. Now how to keep it down way below 300 pages is proving the be the tricky part! But like everything else, I'm still figuring it out.