I’m about halfway through beta-reading this book and I’m beginning to stress. I have six days to get to the end of the book and report back to the author what my thoughts are regarding his novel. No pressure.

I envy those people with a critical eye for writing. You know the people, the ones who can pick at loose threads in a story, the eagle-eyed readers who can pick out spelling and grammatical errors with relative ease, the type of person I’m endeavoring to become.

Like most people, I’m more critical about myself than I am others. I question my word choices, the direction my plot is going, and countless other things. I’m embarrassed by every little error, fearing that someone out in the ether is ready to pounce and mock each and every mistake. It hasn’t happened yet, at least the mocking. I make way too many mistakes.

My priority for the last week of April is to concentrate fully on what I’m reading, and I’ll set aside my own works, which have temporarily stalled anyway. I can’t quite figure out how to resolve the dilemma I’ve created for my character, but more on that in a future post.

There’s my job I’m juggling at the moment, but how many of us are free of the employment obligation? I’m not going to pretend I’m the only one who has to work, but the commute, a two-hour round trip, is a killer.

What’s really taking a lot of time is my truck. For those of you who don’t know, which should be most of you, I’m trying to clean up an old 93 Chevy pick-up.

Here’s the before picture from February.

We’ve been taking it apart, cleaning things up, pulling dents, etc. Rear brakes have been replaced, as has the exhaust. It’s been tuned up, and I need to replace the entire A/C system. To make it even more fun, I decided to paint it. Here are a few more pictures, just to give you an idea.

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So I’ve been busy, all the while I’m trying to improve my golf swing. That isn’t going all to well, but I can’t complain. I have a lot going on, but it feels good. Beats lying around all day doing nothing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure I should be doing something at the moment, I just wish I knew what!