Crowdsourcing

I’m working on the novel revisions that the agent requested, but I need someone to help me read through it and identify words that might be so unusual as to be jarring to the reader. I don’t trust myself to do a good job—I changed “ululating” because that was specifically pointed out by the agent, but looking through the rest of the chapter I skimmed right over “atavistic.” Sam caught that one for me, but he’s having trouble carving out the time to read through the rest of the manuscript. Is there anyone reading this blog who would be willing to help me with this? It has to be a reader who would break stride at “ululating,” “atavistic” and similar words—that is, someone who reads like a normal person, rather than an English major. This is a deficiency of mine and I need a careful reader to help me correct for it.

Let’s see, what else has been going on over the past week. Robin had the second of the two playdates I mentioned: Elena is a very charming little girl, and the two of them played together quite sweetly. Amy sent me a message after they left: Fresh out of the babe’s mouth after asking if she had fun today: “Robin is very nice.” Awww. Awww!

Careful observation has shown that Davy is not crawling, but he can travel quite some distance by rolling. He’s also sitting up now.

The sleep issue: still a problem. Yesterday we ran out of coffee and I was basically non-functional by 3:30 in the afternoon. I crawled into bed as soon as Sam got home at 5:45 and I slept through (except when I had to get up to nurse Davy) until the baby woke up a little after 5 am. I was still tired. At least there’s coffee in the house now, because Sam went and got some last night. Yay Sam!


7 Responses to “Crowdsourcing”

  • Dom Says:

    I’m not an English major, but I don’t know if I’d be much help because words like atavistic and ululating not only don’t bother me but I prefer my literature to contain stuff like that – it’s more evocative!

    I so however award myself ten points since I guessed Davy was probably rolling about, although only on the basis that Ryan used to love doing that! It’s very funny to watch, particularly when some object they want is on a bit of carpet not easily reachable from where they are via their naturally rolling direction. 🙂

    • shannon Says:

      It IS hilarious! Davy can re-orient himself by doing a sort of sideways elbow-crawl, but it seems to take a lot of effort. His intense focus is very sweet to watch though.

  • Todd Says:

    I would be a bad choice for this task, as I find “ululating” and “atavistic” perfectly good words.

  • Molly Says:

    Me! Me! I’m in a writers group and everything! In fact, I remember starting reading when you were posting on livejournal, and then I guess life happened and I never finished.

    Is it still up there? I’ll totes go through for you!

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