I’ve had a great time looking through some of the early crit of my novel. It’s very interesting to see who picks up what.
I knew I’d have loads of corrections and adjustments to make, and that is clearly going to be the case. I’ve got a raft of technical details to sort, scene balancing, continuity checks, dodgy dialogue, missing background and description, not to mention a stack load of grammar and typos to hunt down and nail.
This is clearly going to take a while, and given the day job is pretty demanding, I can’t see it being done before the end of the Spring, possibly even Summer. I think I’m going to have to aim at 2010 (as a whole) being the ‘Year of the Novel’ 
On the positive side though, folks have been telling me that they really really enjoyed the story. That they got to the end because they wanted to see how the story ended up, rather than by duty because I’d asked them too, is the best bit of encouragement I could have received. It seems I have a ‘page-turner’, so now it’s up to me to polish it up, and remove anything that makes the reader go ‘Huh?’ and mucks up the experience for them.
It’s a big job, but I’m committed (!) to doing it!
I wouldn’t be disheartened. It’s a very good novel as it is – I *loved* it!!