I just got feedback from a beta reader of the first book (Programmed for Love) in my contemporary romance series about women who work for a tech startup. I’m so thankful to her for taking a great deal of time to provide me with loads of feedback, but man, do I have work to do. She gave me a entire 3-inch binder full of the manuscript printed 1-sided because she frequently writes on the back of pages.

I have to hurry to get the book ready to enter in a contest in less than a month. I’m going to enter it in the RWA Golden Heart contest (the Romance Writers of America contest for unpublished manuscripts), which requires the full manuscript,  as well as a few others that require only the first 20-30 pages. Golden Heart Entries are due January 11, so that doesn’t leave me much time to rewrite a 95,000-word manuscript (though it should be shorter, to be fair). I did write 80,000 words in 28 days last month for NaNoWriMo, but I’m tired. And those words weren’t very good, whereas these should be polished. So, I have quite the task ahead of me. Wish me luck.