CWoH Chapter 33 Update · 4:35pm Jan 20th, 2018
Well, as you can probably guess by this post's title, this is an update on the long-awaited Chapter 33. I have a bit of news regarding the chapter and the story in general, along with a question or two. Read more information below the break.
Right, I'm going to get right into it. Chapter 33 is finished. It's completed. Or, at the very least, the rough draft is completed. *Note that generally there's very variance between the rough draft and what gets published unless I've really screwed up somewhere and rewrite the entire thing.
So, Chapter 33 is halfway ready. Before I had anyone to preread, I would have simply read over and edited the chapter myself (I still edit it myself) and then published when planned. But now that I have gotten used to prereading, I feel like I have to have it preread to make it better, to make sure I don't screw up, etc. To be honest, I feel a bit constrained by this. I'm sort of at the mercy of my prereader(s). *My primary one is still gone, which sucks. And with it being this time of the year, I'm going to be getting busy with college, and my other prereader is pretty busy too. If this was last year, before I started having stuff preread, I would have gone ahead and published it after last-minute edits to make sure prior edits and read-throughs didn't miss anything.
So my predicament is that Chapter 33 is ready, barring any serious issues which a prereader would find and point out. Skydrake was good about that, he made sure I didn't go insane and make huge plot holes or make the characters look too incompetent (or ruin the whole story in one chapter, which is a big fear of mine). And I feel like this chapter is pretty important and that it should be preread. Ideally, Skydrake would preread it since I talked to him about this particular chapter months ago and value his feedback, but once again, he's gone.
This leads me to my question. Would you rather me go ahead and publish the chapter, pretty much going ahead without prereading, and making the story to the best of my abilities (and also making the story more mine, as I wouldn't have feedback during the writing process to adjust or alter the story), or do you want me to wait until I can get the chapter preread? There's no guarantee I'd change anything with feedback, and there's no guarantee that changes would make the chapter better, but prereaders can point out things that I don't think of or see. Going ahead without prereading, or with prereading whenever it's available, would make development of the story go quicker, but the story might take a hit in quality. I'm not 100% sure on that. I've learned quite a bit and I think (and hope) my writing has improved significantly since I started, so I should be able to pull this story off on my own.
And this leads me to another point. If you'd rather the story continue to be preread to ensure that I'm not going crazy and somehow ruining it, would anyone be interested in volunteering to preread for me? I don't think I'm that demanding. What I've had with my prereaders currently/in the past, we're formal in regards to using grammar properly (read as proper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation), but still maintain a sort of loose style which should spur creativity and encourage discussion. I've enjoyed talking about my stories and the thoughts I've put into them with my prereaders. The downsides are that I procrastinate quite a bit, so you might not hear from me for a couple weeks, then the next week I'm binging and asking for a lot of feedback, advice, or just talking a lot. That's more or less my style with CWoH. I would have, in the past, focused on other stories, then a week, maybe two, before my self-imposed deadline, I'd sit down and start writing, doing edits, talking to prereaders, getting the story preread and receiving feedback, etc.
In summary, Chapter 33 is finished, save for editing passes. I've been unable to have it preread because of the time of year and being busy, and I don't really have anyone to preread it. I'm worried that if I don't have it preread, I'll have missed something and made a huge mistake, but I don't have anyone to preread it. Should I go ahead with CWoH without getting chapters preread? Should I wait for prereading? If I get prereaders to assist, should I have a more rigid schedule, where if it doesn't get preread, I go ahead and publish a chapter when I think it's "ready?" Anyone interested in prereading?
As a last note, I've yet to start writing Chapter 34, but I have some general ideas for it. I miss Skydrake.
I'll be honest, I'm torn between helping out and spoiling what you come up with. In the time since I last responded to one of your blog posts I've started writing my own stories, so there's that too. If you think you might have a chance of finding another prereader I say hold out a bit longer, but if there's no hope of finding one, the only real option is to edit yourself and release what you came up with. Ya gotta be confident in what you write. Even if it's not exactly what we as readers expect from you - it could still be an enjoyable read.