It’s often a question of ‘be careful what you wish for…’. Well, I wished for feedback and I got what I wanted using ProWritingAid both for critique level and the new whole manuscript reports – and I invested in getting my whole portfolio through the whole MS reports. I have enough that I can see an enormous benefit in doing this – and areas where AI needs a little more training. By doing old manuscripts I barely remember, I can compare it to recent ones to see if the same point is being noticed in the story or characters – and if not, why? Have I become aware of whatever? Or is this something I might still do but just didn’t in that MS? There is more than one way to look at this mass of feed back.

I had a human Editor feed back on one novel before I had to stop developing the stories because of life getting too real. So, seeing the two kinds of feed backs in tandem now gives me ‘double bubble’ of info.

I could have found no one paid or otherwise to help me read through this mass of work and feed back multi dimensional info, in those genres, in such a short few weeks and for less than £500 – including the year’s sub for Pro Writing Aid.
I have two different genre series made up of 7 fully written MS and 6 well covered other stories – and if they are good for nothing else; they are giving me this tsunami of feedback – and like the eating of the poor elephant; I have to chew it one bite at a time to swallow it. This required a lot of sitting in my chair, not knowing what the hell to do or where the hell to start, with an entire herd of stampeding elephants tapped in my head.

So, then I start with notes. And then there are notes of notes. And notes of notes of notes. My brain melts into nightmares of ‘cut paste’ and sinks in a lake of swirling ideas, ‘how many?’ new documents – some for this and that and whatever? And then things clear and I realise that there is something that has stepped forward out of all these thousands of words staring at me and that is that my prequel, ‘October Mornings’ facing me square on; I wrote this after the Lucks Hill Riders series was finished as the ‘new fangled idea’ of a ‘free giveaway’ loss leader became popular and I set myself to write a story containing all the youngsters but in which the four local main characters do not actually meet the fifth one – though they are all in sight of each other at one point – that is as close as they get. I was pleased with the contrivance I asked myself to make and a 48k story turned its self in that I liked. My life changed a lot after that and I forgot why I wrote what I did; it just became the prequel – ‘this one is free if you liked it please buy book two…’ But had I written a story about Benji and about the others from the start of the project I might have done something different to begin with but I started where I had and did not feel inclined to use a 120 k MS as a ‘free give away’ and 20 years later I feel even less so. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when the AI pointed out that Benji’s story is separate from the rest of the plot of October Mornings – it is true, it is so. When I re fed the AI with the entire series, it understood what was going on – but individually it couldn’t see it.

I shrugged it off. It was just one comment in A Lot of Feedback. Yet it is the one I have clarity on first – a thing I can do – take Benji out – he is in his own complete plot arc which I can now expand on and the others can have their adventures in October Mornings – they can still both be set in that half term – and they can still be in the same place at the same time and we might see them ‘see’ each other and ‘walk by’ but then when In Plain Sight starts – and Benji turns up in their world – we will know more why he is there and that they have not indeed met him – he is still a stranger/ a passerby in the crowd where he might just have observed their shenanigans at the auction; but they were too busy to notice him – and I will have two bits of intellectual property to use as launch material and loss leader – one novella of about 20 k and the other a novella or shorter novel 35-45 k.
I panicked at this. How is making another complete novel/novella going to help? But I have to start somewhere breaking this down and re modelling these stories into the series. These stories – so long as the elephants in my life – need their own zoo.

Do I have a date for publication? ‘Do I hell as like!’ To quote my much missed Aunty Ruth. I know this generates a bum throw on the game board of life and from the ‘plot hole’ on which I stood I am being returned to ‘Go’ once more and do not collect £200 – nor am I likely to publish any books this year and that is the bitter pill. Accepting the feed back brings this even when I know a human Editor would have taken several months of summer to feedback – and then I would have been in the same position having to process it – as I am now – but without the feedback and eagle eye view on the whole LHR series – or other stories/series and on my whole performance: I would have also likely firmed up my belief and enthusiasm for publishing this year at Christmas and realised much closer to that it would not be possible. And indeed maybe I should let go of the idea of a Christmas release any way August September would be fine – next year… LOL 🙂