Rinse. Repeat.

Isn't it lovely to have someone who believes in you? My very good friend and alpha reader Aleta came to visit. She ASKED (can you imagine a better friend?) to read it out loud to me so we could discuss it as we went. So, between taking the kids to the circus and going to the YMCA, we sat on the couch and I listened.

It was really strange to hear my words read aloud. It was almost like they were a real story and made it so easy to spot problems. As we worked through the first hundred pages I realized I have a lot of good things on the paper and some things that aren't there yet.

This photo is from last year.

Yes, we have arranged marriages planned.

 I won't embarrass the kids by naming names.

I've been listening to each chapter on 'narrator' (In case you've missed other mentions, this program comes with microsft windows. You can't use it in office, but if you paste into wordpad, then you can listen as the computer reads text.) Unfortunately, a computer can't inflect or answer questions, so you miss where the meaning or emphasis is ambiguous. And you can't ask a computer if the humor is too much, if the dialogue sounds stilted, or if it's okay to use the word 'discombobulated'. Not that I would try to pull that off. 'Discombobulated' is incontravertably unweildy. See how much I need a reader?

It was like a book club about my very favorite book in the whole world and it went on and on. I cannot say how much I appreciated the time that was given to me. I hope that you find people that expect you to succeed like this, whatever the area of your life it occurs in.

Aleta returned to her home in Arizona but left behind a few hundred items to fix. I'm thinking about reading and recording the other 300 pages so I can listen to it. Truly, this was one of the best writing exercises I've ever done. There is no other way to get such thorough feedback. So, goodbye for now readers. I have a lot of work to do!