Two more of my Alpha Readers gave me their criticism on the book, and I’m still picking the shrapnel out of my ego. I picked my first readers well — they’re good enough friends to call me on my shit. And called it was indeed. INDEED.
Beyond the psyche-bruising, all this feedback is making me really excited to get back to work on editing. So far, all of my readers have overall enjoyed the book — and the problems they’ve called my attention to are concrete. Maybe not easy to fix — but definitely doable. I can see multiple ways to change things to evade their criticism, but I’m going to let all of it settle a while longer. I’m still waiting on feedback from a third of my readers, and I don’t want to over-react to the first criticism I’ve received.
Admittedly, a fair amount of the criticism are ‘no-argument’ types. Grammar flubs, word repetition, confusing passages, jokes that didn’t work, etc. Those will be fixed — -it’s the things that deal more with overall structure and style that I’ll need to carefully ruminate on.
Sorry I can’t be more specific yet! Still drafts out in the wild.
Alpha Readers Responding: 4 out of 12
spell-sword.com 
I label my first go-to ‘edit-buddy’, because he is exactly that. He will literally ‘lol’, swear and be downright insulting in marvelous red all across my pages if he sees the need. But, as you said, they’re wonderfully useful and if you can handle their (your Alpha Readers’) insults, er I mean, criticisms you can literally handle anyone’s. (Except of course a squirrel hopped up on speed who will simply chew it up and spit it out.)
All the best on your edit journey :).
Thanks, Jackie! The more criticism I get, the fresher I feel. The less sacred my text is the better, I’m getting fired up to get in there and edit like INSANITY BEANS.
Finished it Friday night…
!!!