My Holiday Academia

...Just the preps, I haven't started on the actual edits yet XD But I have a roadmap and an extensive list of actionable steps, and I'm glad I do. Working offline using Pomodoro, like I mentioned the other day was super effective.

A disadvantage, I suppose, is that I can't have conversations back-and-forth in GoogleDoc comments, which is something I dearly enjoy doing with fanfic (either as beta-reader or beta-readee!). I think maybe it's just too much, on a turnaround of 40k words at once. Also because I needed to let it rest, folks might not be so interested in a reply 6 months later on a reaction they don't remember having about a story they fuzzily recall 😅 Having said that, I did write to folks after chopping their feedback into the roadmap, to thank them again and share a general reaction to their reactions :D

( Stuff to ponder )

It took me 17h41 to go through all 7 beta-readers' feedback. (Thanks again everyone for offering, I am so grateful :D). I'm going to have a brief interlude now (well, brief is the plan XD). Ideally, I'd like to use that time to write something original but SHORTER so I can bask in the self-indulgence of inventing fun worldbuilding, which I loooove doing. But on the other hand, Wind Breaker Volume 22 just came out and drove me insane with the OT5 vibes so I may have to write something for that instead XD

I 100% intend to break down the work and take regular breaks when I start actually following the roadmap, if only to make the structural changes then giving it a bit of space so I can make sure the major changes didn't break something else important. I expect overall it'll likely take longer than the 17h41 prep time, so I better pace myself! I think I should learn very interesting things throughout the process. I'm already thinking about what to be careful about in the Soul Thief story, when I get back to it.

I am 57% into my beta edit preps – not the edits themselves based on the actual beta feedback yet, but the list of action items I intend to go through. I'm more or less following the plan I had set out, though I ended up using Scrivener comments a lot instead of a separate file as I had expected. So I have 3 files/file types:

• Structural comments, which I'll address first. I think this will be the most difficult and most painful part. Will try to do this in a way that has as few consequences as possible to limit the amount of rewriting (I think that's feasible as long as I'm careful, for this particular story).
• Overall comments, for stuff that'll need small changes in every chapter. I plan to re-read this before and after every chapter edit, so I keep it in mind as I edit and potentially find new areas to include these elements. It's about things like certain characters feeling too one-dimensional and/or too unsympathetic (so more options for interactions, flashbacks/memories, and other elements to flesh them out more), worldbuilding elements that still weren't highlighted enough and feel like a surprise when they come up later, etc.
• One file per chapter for more generic notes, though so far I'm not really using that much. Scrivener comments are doing the job. And it's very satisfying when several people bring up the same thing and I can edit an existing comment, like, wow! This sure was a confusing paragraph for everyone, huh!

Having said that, I still had massive, massive, massive issues with getting started. Like, I had built this all up into such a huge thing in my head, and it's in the first time I handle feedback on an entire manuscript at once, and from several people... Below the cut is a list of things I did to finally make myself Just Do It (tm). Maybe there'll be a piece of inspiration for someone else, though mainly I want my future self to remember to check here next time I'm stuck! In my case, it was definitely a process problem, like, just not knowing where to start or what to do.

( vriddy's weirdo productivity tips on actually getting started )

In general, I am tremendously enjoying working offline. I got the feedback back in 3 formats: GoogleDocs, Ellipsus, and LibreOffice with tracked changes. I am loving the LibreOffice one, so much that I downloaded all the GDocs too (thankfully the comments are included!) and work like this for everything. Ellipsus didn't work for me for reasons I mentioned earlier, and as a note doesn't seem to allow exporting with comments either, as far as I could see.

Making progress feels nice! Once I have a system, it's easier for me to let momentum carry me. We'll see if that continues to work when it's time to do the actual beta changes! I do intend to take a short break before jumping in.

That's another post that was due back in January ;) I mentioned that I'd asked beta-readers if they would be up for trying out Ellipsus with me for beta-reading the Cursed Witch. Unfortunately, after a couple of them agreed and started, I ended up having to ask folks to use another platform.

I know a few people in my circles are using Ellipsus for writing - if some of this information is out of date, let me know! From extracting the beta-reader comments and feedback this month, I think the pieces that are deal-breakers for me are still present. I still massively support Ellipsus and the stance they're taking against generative AI. We need more small independent writer-friendly companies like this.

As an additional note, if you stay subscribed to the email "welcome" sequence after joining, at the end they send you a friendly email from one of the co-founders asking for feedback, which I did share. I received a very gracious reply explaining what they were working on at the moment and when they'd hopefully get to these issues. I understand the need to prioritise, and I'm totally rooting for them.

Having said that, here's why Ellipsus didn't work for me for beta-reading compared to a tool like GoogleDoc or LibreOffice.

Finding the changes

( Read more... )

Can't see both comments and in-text suggestions at the same time

( Read more... )

Email stuff, minor and a bit annoying though not a deal breaker

( Read more... )

So that's been my experience! The third one can be avoided with some email filtering, but from starting to incorporate comments and feedback from beta-reading this month, I believe the two deal-breakers are still a problem. However, this is all for a very specific, "beta-reader" use case rather than actual writing. I understand Ellipsus is an amazing GDoc replacement for that use case, and excellent for real-time collaborative writing. If you've been looking for GDoc alternative for your writing, one that doesn't feed your work to an AI training corpus, consider it!

And if you're using Ellipsus already, would love to hear about your experience so I can understand better what it does well and less well, and more easily recommend it when applicable to people looking for a new tool :)