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...

Today I was asked how I finished my book...

Unfortunately I had to swallow the bitter pill of reality and admit that my book is far from finished. There is a horrifyingly scary amount to do before I'll run the agent, editor and publisher guantlet! Even then I have to expect them to say it is not finished.

BUT I can tell you about how I got from a blank piece of paper to a first draft.

The truth is this... I can't remember the moment when the light bulb 'dinged' above my head, or I started imagining characters in my head (never talking to them though, I hear this is a bad sign?) but the whole novel was actually born from an entirely different idea. It certainly didn't 'ding' into my life. I suspect it was more like a six hour shift at the library, with the beginning of an idea ruminating until I decided I had to do something with it.

Now I do remember the day I decided to do something with it. I sat down and decided that I wanted to write in the first person and that for this idea my main character would be a boy. Then after a page I scrapped it all and thought 'No I don't want the main character to be a boy, I want it to be a girl'. Again and again I scrapped the first page and chuckled to myself about my silly fantasy of thinking that I could just sit down and write. Who did I think I was, J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins or Stephanie Meyer?

My housemate peered into my room and asked what I was doing so I launched into a 'Don't you think it's a good idea' speech about my new idea. We got excited and thought it'd be a great film, obviously someone would want to pick up the rights, right?

Oh the naivety! The idea changed DRASTICALLY from that afternoon but the useful thing for me was talking t through with somebody and getting excited about them saying 'Yes, it is a good idea'. As soon as you hear that, it gets a teensy bit easier. For a while I wrote down notes that I wanted to happen and they always referred to the main character as 'Girl'. I couldn't write from the character's p.o.v before I even knew her and I couldn't just sit down and think 'It's Tuesday afternoon and I have nothing to do so I am going to write',

Then, on a three hour train ride I found my character and I found her voice just by sitting and thinking about the story. She stemmed from a 'what if' question.

I'm not saying it hasn't been done before, because it has, but 'What if she woke up and didn't know who she was, where she was or why she was there?' Then the name just came to me. Caro.

So after months of stewing, I had her name and I had her 'What if' and realised that I'd got to the point where I just HAD to start writing. As soon as I had that it snowballed and I wrote solidly for the whole three hour train journey. I didn't scrap a single thing (I have now, but lets scoot past that and revel in the moment!).

For months the idea swam around amongst my final uni project and my dissertation and I occasionally wrote but it was more about getting to know them in my head (wow when I talk about them in my head it does sound like I'm heading into the crazy) and creating the world WHICH is the hardest thing. (When you read a book and don't even question the complex and creative construct of the world you're reading about, please stop and think about how awesome that is.)

When out of uni, as I've said before, work was scarce and I found myself with way too much spare time on my hands.

Too much spare time = lots of thinking time.

Lots of thinking time = (for me) over thinking the depressing lack of work, money and social life.

So instead my lots of thinking time became my writing time. My boyfriend, quite possibly fed up of my down time that came from lots of thinking, said that I should be like a proper writer, that I should treat it as a job.

And I did.

I wrote everyday.

There are many, many documents and guides that I probably should have read during the writing process, but I didn't and I still finished. That is because I didn't stop. Of course, now I have to go through and use the knowledge of all these fantastic writing guides to edit and to help shape my ideas.

There are loads of different pieces of advice, but for me the key was...

Write. Keep at it and just write.