[trystan830]

even if you're self-publishing, you really ought to have correct grammar, even if your audience might not care so much about it.

[Kaderin Triste]

Already less than 100 pages in and I don't know how much more of this book I can read. The author plays fast and loose with not just grammar, but punctuation, and paragraph/page spacing/formatting. Like she's afraid to put more than 2-3 sentences per paragraph, there are random page breaks for no reason, she just kind of slaps chapters in wherever they fall, whether it's on a new page or the middle of a page. And the characters feel half-developed. Like, I keep having to ask "is this character 14 or 40?" and having to backtrack because suddenly something will be mentioned (like childhood nicknames) with no previous mention or display of said nicknames or character having uncharacteristic taste in music based on age, until a couple pages later we get an explanation as to why/how they were introduced to the music they like.
(Ex: Main character greets best friend, using friend's full name, suddenly we get a rambly introduction of how they decided toncall each ither by the first letter of their names as a sort of nickname even though they just displayed exactly the opposite, followed by sporadic, at best, use of mentioned nicknames.)
And a lot of the dialogue and inward thoughts are just clunky and...awkward. I literally want to take a red pen to this book and just make notes and corrections, but it's kind of a loaner so I can't.

[trystan830]

oh yikes, that sounds like a trainwreck of a book, honestly. :O

but if you're curious, my writing style is kinda rambly sometimes too, with short paragraphs and random page breaks. (it's the "my NaNos" link in my sig.)

to be fair, i've read some published works where, if the chapter stops in the middle of a page, the way it's typeset is there's a space, and then the next chapter starts - instead at the top of the next page. it's really weird, and i don't like it, but that's the way it was typeset.

[Kaderin Triste]

I mean, I'm okay with rambly and short paragraphs to an extent but like...this woman breaks up something a person is saying or thinking into multiple paragraphs. For no reason. She has random page breaks in the middle of chapters. For no reason. She skips vital information when we need it, only to add it a page or more later on.

I've never actually read your nano stuff (if I recall the plots/genres of them just don't appeal to me), but I'm 99% sure it'd be better than this.

I'm sure I've already said this, but it looks like she typed it out, ran spell check and said, "okay, good enough! Let's slap a cover on this!"

[trystan830]

i think you did say that, and i'm pretty sure i said "yikes!" but i'm gonna say it again after reading your first paragraph - YIKES.

as for my NaNos, fair enough. the link is an index that has the blurb/summaries on them, so if you ever want to take another look, that's what that link is. :)

[Kaderin Triste]

I feel like after muddling through this, I have no excuse for not checking out one or two of yours. XD

I'll have to check out the summaries again because I can't actually remember what they were.

[trystan830]

fair enough.

i'm starting to uh... plan (says the panter) something for this year already...

[Kaderin Triste]

I mean, now is definitely a good time to start planning. XD

On the one hand, I almost want to try NaNo again this year, but on the other hand, I know that, in addition to my busy schedule, November is (usually) an insanely busy month for my retail job so I just won't have time.

[trystan830]

planning? what's that? i'm a pantser, i write by the seat of my pants.

no, that's not entirely true. did i ever post my bridge analogy? it might be over in the nano thread.

november is always busy in retail. black friday is evil.

[Kaderin Triste]

Yeah, my boss has already put up a message saying there be no time off/vacation allowed between November 1st and December 26th.
So that's gonna be fun.

[trystan830]

oof, that's rough.

in the past when my retail job has been open thanksgiving night (6 to 11?) it's been on a voluntary basis. i've never volunteered, no thank you. and friday, my availability starts at 9, so when the manager tries to schedule me at 8, i'm like nope. but since we reopened at the beginning of june, every day seems like the xmas season. *sigh*

[Kaderin Triste]

Thankfully we're not open on Thanksgiving night, but EVERYONE works Black Friday, ngl though, last year was pretty quiet and I don't anticipate this year getting that crazy either.

Yeah, we had big surges of business when covid first hit, then it died down a little around may/early June, but then the governor finally made masks mandatory in all businesses and wenhad another big surge of business, but it's kind of dying down again. Still mostly busier than normal, but not quite holiday levels.

[trystan830]

i wonder if we'll be open, when a lot of the larger retailers will
actually be closed (because of covid, not for some other reason).

oh, we're still quite busy... but i also only work there fri, sat, and sun... so i don't know what the weekdays look like.

[Kaderin Triste]

Yeah, I'm kind of curious to see how black Friday is handled here. I feel like it won't be too bad since the Canadian border is still closed and that's where a lot of our seasonal rush comes from, but I imagine we'll have to have someone monitoring the door to limit the number of people inside at a time or something.
Idk it's just a weird year all around really.

[trystan830]

oh yeah, 2020 is a weird year, that's for sure

[Kaderin Triste]

I remember in Jan/Feb I was all "oh, 2020's gonnna be great, I'm gonna get my finances all sorted out and then get my life in general all sorted out!" Now I'm just the "this is fine" dog meme.