To post or not to post, that is the question

Not an original title for this posting, I guess, but it fits my thinking.

I think I will post the first and second chapters of "Death at the Jungle-bunny Journal" on a website called tNBW (the Next Big Writer). It is a writing community and after I post I should get comments on my writing and the story. To make further posts, I will need to build up credits by doing critiques of other writers.

I am conflicted for two reasons, however.

First, I am extremely sensitive to criticism, paerticularly of my writing. (But obviously not of my spelling.) I know I will have to get over that. And if I don't take it personally, then it should be easier. But I do take it personally. Gotta work on that!

The second reason is more practical. I'm afraid it will slow down my writing.

Writing "Fighting Chaos" took forever and part of working so hard on J-B-J is to get it all down on paper, so to speak, in a more timely way. In my head, I set a three-month deadline for finishing, although on paper I gave myself five months. At this point, I am somewhere in the middle. (But it could have gotten done in three.) I try to eliminate all the reasons and obstacles (sp, again) to getting it done in a timely manner and just plow ahead.

I fear that posting chapters while I am still working on the first draft and then getting comments, although undoubtedy useful ones, will make me go back and re-write earlier material and never get around to finishing the entire work. As it is now, I try to avoid going back and reading and then touching up earlier parts of the book. I try to make note of changes I intend to make when completing the second, third or fourth drafts. That way I won't get hung up on the past and never finish what will be in the future.

But if I finish the entire novel and then start posting for comments on tNBW, I will have invested so much time and energy on the book to that point that I won't want to make wholesale changes that may be offered. That is certainly why I opted to post chapters of J-B-J instead of Chaos.

So, in the end, I will try posting chapters while I am writing. And I may just keep all the comments and work them into my later drafts when I get to them. We should see.

Also, at the suggestion of the writer in South Carolina whom I mentioned yesterday, I looked into another online agent search website. It is called it is litmatch.net and it is great. I have and will continue to use agentquery.com but will combine it with litmatch.

In litmatch, I can also track my submissions online and view data on how agents have responded to queries. It sounds good.

I have a Sisters in Crime meeting on Saturday and I always look forward to that. I always get good advice from other members of the chapter.

As for the title above, I decided to steal from the great bard and try a little iambic verse. Oddly enough, I still can't read or understand poetry. It just zips over my head.

Oh well . . .

Thanks for reading and keep writing.