I’m nose to the grindstone, getting Knight ready to go out to betas at the end of this weekend, so I’m going to be pretty absent from everywhere until I can click send. I have to say, my critique group has been invaluable in both smoothing out and catching issues, but also in showing me that maybe I am capable of writing a good story. This chance to go back through the whole story all at once has been good for my temper and better for my sense of self-esteem, which always takes a beating at this point in the process.

Still, it’s a tiring process and I’ll be glad when it’s done and I can take a bit of a break. I have my story for the Goodreads MM Romance group to work on and I’m hoping to hear back about Nuts About You in the near future. There’s also the research for The Courtesy of Knives, and the planning for If/Then. Plus a few shorts I’m considering shoehorning into the schedule.

One thing that happened with Knight, that I’d like to avoid in the future, is that I ended up posting actual first drafts in the critique group. It wasn’t something I was happy about doing, but running out of time sometimes makes you choose avenues you wouldn’t have at other times. So, I think I’m going to avoid calls with due dates, excepts for shorts with a significant lead time. I want to make better use of the expertise to be found in my group and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s disrespectful of me to throw half-assed work up and expect someone else to take time out of their writing to fix errors I should be catching. So, I’ll be writing a long, eloquent apology letter to my group in the near future.

But not until I’ve sanded a few more rough edges off of Knight.