So, as some of you may be aware, in November 2018 I used NaNoWriMo to write the first 50,000 words of my fantasy novel (it’s set in a Middle Ages style military matriarchy! I’m still very excited about that fact) and then by March 2019 I had a full novel draft of about 80,000 words.

I felt like the text needed a lot of clean up and revision before it could it could be shared with anyone, there were a lot of “[insert name here]” type things, which I felt would get in the way of people getting what the story was trying to do and enjoying the characters and so on. I wanted useful feedback, and at that stage the text was just too rough for an outsider to get a clear view of it.