Mum's Feedback

First...

Mum's birthday was the deadline I had set for the completion of my first draft and I am amazed to say that she only received it a week late (maybe a week and a half). I sent it to her as soon as Ed had finished making it look cool in ebook format, which it really did; I had a massive geek out when he showed it to me.... it looked like an ACTUAL ebook!

Next...

I had to wait... and it was excruciating. I didn't want to bug Mum and make her feel pressured to finish it, so instead I texted Dad incessantly. Stuff along the lines of;

'Has she started yet?'

'Has she said anything?'

'Do you know where she is?'

'Has she reached the part where... oh, well, I can't tell you, it'll give it away'.

I also tried to disguise my stressing out with texts that masqueraded as everyday questions;

'How are you?'

'What are you up to today, having a lazy day?'

I'm pretty sure I fooled nobody...

Then...

I got a text when I was at work saying

'Just finished. Wow. Love it, love it, love it'.

Well, that made my heart race. I thought it would take her much longer to finish. When I had checked two days before she was only half way through.

I got home as quickly as I could; and I mean quickly, I wasn't stopping for anybody. As soon as I got into the house I raced upstairs and rang her. We spoke for a full hour about my book. A full hour (happy dance)! Admittedly, probably due to the intense bias of being a mum, she didn't really have any criticism for me. It took some probing questions from me to smoke out the gaps in Mum's responses; things that I hadn't made clear enough... for example, a whopping great plot changer had been completely missed! She blamed herself, but for me it was excellent feedback because I want people to get it straight away. After all, it's not like someone reading it in Australia would have me looking over their shoulder saying 'Oh that bit? Oh that means...'.

My first bit of feedback was awesome. I felt GREAT, really like I had achieved something. Dare I say it..? Like a budding author... No too soon.

The other really exciting thing was that Mum started guessing what was going to happen next... she didn't guess BUT she had some great theories; theories that made me stop and take note, to really consider the possibilities of what she was thinking.

Obviously then my imagination went off on one and was fired up to write the next book. I stopped and forced myself to be disciplined; with great difficulty I convinced myself that the priority was to polish my story (Grammar and technique is a massive hurdle that I am ignoring until I'm happy with the plot).

So editing hey? This should be fun...