Second draft finished…

As the title suggests, I finished the second draft.

I sent it to some people for a review. My first beta readers! I expected to sit for weeks and bite my nails, worrying about how much they will hate my writing. But actually – following another writer’s advice – I started working on a completely different project instead. “I never stop writing,” she told me, and it seems to work.

My husband was my first reader, and it was really fun. “Oooh,” he’d announce, “he’s got a dog now!” Or: “Whoa, she moves into the village earlier!” I was a bit like, yes I know that, but also proud that he read it closely enough to notice the differences. Obviously, being my husband, he can’t be truly objective, which is why I sent it to more people whose feedback I trust – ones that won’t be all like “you are my friend so I love everything” or “meh ur dumb lol”. I told them to ignore grammar, inconsistencies (I am yet to draw the timeline properly, also halfway through the book I accidentally changed someone’s mother – luckily I noticed that before sending the draft to my beta readers and fixed that one) and focus on a few things: 1. Is this even readable; 2. Does it put you to sleep, or make you hate me for forcing you to read it; 3. Is my sense of humour at least somewhat funny; 4. Do I give too many hints.

I am planning a trip to Iceland; tentative date would be somewhere in June. It’s a country which by now receives 8 times more tourists per year than there are citizens (2.4 million versus 300 thousand). And their economy is doing too well which worries their government. I can’t say I understand how economy doing too well can be worrying, but it’s not my problem. I am more worried about encountering 300 thousand people trying to visit exactly the same spots as me.

Irritatingly, I can’t publish the book under my own name. Because there already is a writer called Ray Grant. I’ve had a suggestion to go for Ray T. S. Grant, George R. R. Martin style. Considering. I am not changing my raygrant.com domain though. Unless I go for a completely different name. #whitegirlproblems

Photo: Clavius Rork, used by permission