Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The Race is On

I've been threatening Jenny that I'm going to read what I have of FJR as quick as I can and give her grief if she doesn't have the last chapters ready for me by the time I catch up. Admittedly, I've been saying this partly to uphold my demonic reputation.

However, it's mostly a warning instead of a threat. I don't expect it to take me long to get through the 200+ pages. Jenny's a good writer and I've got the manuscript of a novel I like. Yesterday I took the manuscript with me to the terrible class and got through page 44. Up to this point, I've read it all already, and I'm making a lot of the same notes I remember making on another copy of the manuscript she gave me a while back (no edits between the two, apparently). I expect I'll slow down a bit once I strike into the new part, but I'll certainly have it read by the next group meeting.

Now, Jenny's got those of us who volunteered to read the whole novel split into two groups - her first readers and second, post-edit, readers - in order to save some money on copies. What she doesn't know yet (but will as soon as she reads this) is that I plan to be in both groups. My campus printing account has lots and lots of pages left, so all she'll need to do is e-mail it to me. (Hint, hint, Jenny).

I suppose I'm starting to sound a bit possessive here, but I have a hard time apologizing for it. She knows that I wouldn't get possessive if I didn't like the book, and who's going to turn down a bonus (and free) extra reader/proof reader? Exactly.

2 comments:

Jenny Maloney said...

Actually, one of my big reasons for not giving everyone a copy on the first shot was that I didn't want to wear everyone down with multiple readings (because I know I need at least two)...so I wanted to keep some people fresh. But! If you've got a page account and enough time and enough patience, I'll send it out to ya. But maybe I should get you the whole draft before we even talk about that...

Ali said...

Yes, a whole draft. Good idea :)