I used to work in the video game industry. Crunch Time was a dreaded concept. It’s basically working overtime to hit a milestone. To continue the parallel with writing books, Alpha should be the completion of the first draft. The book is done from beginning to end, but it has lots of problems. Then comes Beta, when several revision and polish passes happen. Beta should be pretty much a finished product, but sure, an editor sees it. Points out some bugs. Corrects some errors. And in fact, many authors are already accustomed to using Beta Readers. This is where the term comes from.
These deadlines have been on my mind lately because I’ve noticed my work hours going up over the last two weeks as I pushed myself to hit Beta. My last two project updates could be summed up by saying, “editing.” This week is no different.
Well, scratch that. Yes, I have been dutifully editing all week. But there’s one important difference:
I’M DONE.
You heard right. I copy edited everything. Ran the last spell check and search filters. My second novel is being sent off to my editor, which means I can officially start pre-production on other projects. I’ll share more cool news with you later, but for now I’m excited.
Leave a Reply