Ouch, Hurt and Learn - a Writer's Journey

Ouch:
My mentor, teacher, editor-extraordinaire, industry goddess—a person whom I admire and trust returned her opinion of Isis. Her offer to read my manuscript was a dream come true and I knew that I could count on her honesty.

Hurt:
I’ve heard of an author who takes her edits straight from the mail and puts them into the freezer section of her refrigerator. The desire to put some coldness between my writer’s burning soul and the hard, frozen truth of the professional (mine & my mentor’s) is understandable. It’s what happens next that defines the writer. I am a professional. I will not only open my arms to the advice, but I will feel it fully, absorb the pain, and learn from it.

Three areas to concentrate on:

More tension, (my readers just groaned-as they already feel like they’ve been through an incredible roller coaster ride of tension—keep reading) especially in the beginning.
Dialogue wasn’t feeling realistic to me.
I had trouble feeling Eve’s emotions.

Learn:
Tension, I can fix. The good news is that I found this myself coming back from DFWWW; the bad news is that I found it too late and may have squandered my ‘free manuscript review’ as a result. I even highlighted the problem in those first fifty pages while bouncing through air turbulence. To find the letter on my desk, simply confirmed my worst fears.

Dialog, I can fix. Perhaps this was more a style difficulty. My dialog also might include too much information, better explained elsewhere or cut. That I can do. Or it might be more underlying than that.

Reader was unable to feel my main character’s emotions; the nail in the coffin for me and something I thought I fixed. Certainly other readers hadn't mentioned this or I didn't recognize what they were saying. Back to the writer’s tool chest and time to be brutally honest. Splat. Wall. Blood, guts and brain matter. Have I squandered two valuable opportunities as a result? Is the true strength of my first pages in this regard strong enough to carry over the weaker mid-section of my first fifty? I hope so, especially when that other opportunity was with an agent in my top five--to be honest, she is in all five slots of my top ten. Once done, there are rarely second chances in this industry...

In either case, it’s back to classes and intensive reading of current fiction work that draws the reader in close. Finding the right instructor, the right instruction book, the right course to help me pick apart successful manuscripts that do this and learn to apply it well is essential.

Learning the right tools to improve this is now my top priority. I can’t be content with what I have presently and this valuable feedback will drive me to a new level of competency.

Ouch, hurt and learn--I can do that.


Another thank you to all of the people who read my manuscript, gave me such excellent advice, and continue to support my efforts in this journey.