Bring on the Criticism!

Maybe I'm weird - okay I know I'm weird - but I'm SO excited to be going through all the criticism from the judges of the Daphne du Maurier contest.  They've given the good, bad, and the ugly on my book. And while I did have a response to one judge's comment, the rest all gave me tons of stuff to work on. Best part? Most of their criticisms are what I was already thinking is wrong with the book. 

It's great to know I'm on the right track. Now I just have to figure out how to fix it. And how am I supposed to improve my writing if I don't know what's wrong. I mean, I know the entire story, but I don't know that what's on the page is enough for everyone else.

My favorite comment is this one from the summary page: 

The basis of the story is very good. 

Short and to the point and tells me I've got a good starting point at least.

This one warmed my heart and made feel for the judge, because I may be the one contestant who won't take her comments as criticisms of who I am or who my character is.

Please don't feel discouraged by any of my remarks. You've got the premise for a great cozy here, you just need to work it up some more. I know how hard it is to take a wip from ok-to-good-to-great. You can do it! You've got the imagination, the smarts, and the "voice". Keep at it and i'm sure you'll be published. Good luck!

 This judge is the only one I wish I could have spoken too, because I had questions for her.

You’ve created a heroine with a lot of potential: ex-alcoholic, short fuse, and surprised by dead people at all hours of the day though she’s still a bit of a cipher to me.

I’m pretty confused about the rules/mythology for the dead people. Can the dead people contact jess anywhere or do they have to stay where they are? Could rosie get into the car with jess if she wanted to or does she need to stay in jess’ home? Does jess see dead people constantly at the hospital?

I would think carefully about what the main story is - sallie mae’s story or the story at the hospital - and how much detail you need to go into about the ancillary characters. I’m not sure who is really important to the story.

 My question would be should I put all the information on the rules for Jess's dead groupies. It comes later in the book and I'm wondering if I should put it in the first few chapters. If I could have put in more than 5,000 words she would have gotten that info. But I really like the last paragraph about thinking what is the main story. Because they're all tangled up together I'm not quite sure how I'll fix that yet.

And this one was my absolute favorite, mainly because this judge also gave me his/her email address should I have questions later - and I will be sending one for certain!  

I think this submission has some real potential. The author has an interesting plot in mind. And to be honest, except for a typo here or there, I had no real issues with sentence structure, grammar or punctuation (except for the!s) It was the overabundance of detail that kept stopping me. But truthfully, this is an easy fix, as long as you are willing to part with a good portion of your words.

Think of your novel as a garden. It’s hopefully overflowing with flowers instead of weeds. You want your readers to see and smell and experience the beauty of your skillfully crafted roses, hollyhocks and irises, your flowers. You don’t want your novel garden to be overrun by dandelions.

I wish you the very best and hope that I helped at least a little. Never give up, never stop writing and always, always believe in yourself.

That last line is the one to hang onto. And I hope soon, that I'll get it all figured out and be able to get Jess' story out there.

I Always Wanted to Write a Book! Conference was a Success!

GRRWG hosted it's first ever writer's conference this past weekend and it was a rousing success!  The committee did a great job, everyone pitched in to help out and it ran so smoothly that if anything had been falling apart behind the scenes (and from my experience something usually does) no one knew about it.  Yay Team!!

Highlight for me - besides the sessions - was the agent pitch.  I lost my "agent pitch virginity" at this conference which ended with a request for the first 3 re-written chapters of The Reluctant Psychic.  Yay me!  She made it really easy for all of us and was such fun to have at the conference. 

While I’ve survived my conferences, I have a load to do this week.  First, I need to study and pass a tech exam that’s needed for work for a partner relationship that we have.  Second, I need to WRITE!  Third, I need to get a critique group scheduled with Sidney and anyone else that’s looking for a group and meet up sometime this week.  That’s on top of a meeting I’m hosting tomorrow for a bunch of techies.  I’m busy, busy, busy.

Lucky for me I have quirky pets to make me laugh.  This is Marco, our Maine Coon kitten (yes, even at 18.5 lbs. he’s still a kitten for another year).

 

Happy Halloween!!  Marco “picked” his pumpkin.  (No worries, I grew this one myself, no chemicals involved).

Conferences, Conferences!

First up I have my big techie conference next week (for which I'm hopping on a train to get there), and then we have our GRRWG "I Always Wanted to Write A Book" conference on the 21/22 of October.  It's going to be a busy month!

If you're in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area on the 21st and 22nd of this month, stop on by our conference.  Details can be found at grandrapidsregionwritersgroup.blogspot.com.  Just look for the Conference tabs.   Hopefully I'll see you there!

Ready....Set...Write! Yeah, right!

So here I sit, Diet Pepsi and Chocolate on hand (doesn't everyone have Diet Pepsi and Chocolate for breakfast?) ready to write something fantabulous for the Grand Rapids Region Writer's Group for my first blog entry and my brain goes "Yeah, right. I'm taking a nap." and hands the reigns over to Jess, Paul, Collie, Merie, and Myrtle. Let the chaos ensue!

I even tried the tactic of hitting FaceBook to get them to back off to no avail. Instead, I now have notes for 2 more books, three more scenes written for existing stuff, and none of it edited or even in one spot. Too bad I don't make enough at the day job to afford an assistant, I could really use one today. And to top it off I have a fund raiser to appear at this afternoon, found a Drag Queen in town that I just MUST meet - she's GORGEOUS! - and luckily a friend of mine is FB friends with her, and I got myself volunteered to help with IT stuff for the next Network Neighborhood Bash. This is all on top of my normal workload, upcoming IT training session (I'm the leader/presenter), planning for a 2-day local tech event organized, manned, and pulled off by volunteers who all have full time IT jobs.

The chocolate is gone now, the Diet Pepsi is about 1/2 drained, the dogs have finally stopped barking, Jess is still chatting, but much quieter now, and I'm still trying to figure out what to write for the GRRWG blog. Something will come...I hope.

I'm also thinking about the latest news from my newly assigned mentor, an established, published author, and dreading the fact that not only do I need this blog, I now also need to set up a website for myself. I work in IT all day long, the last thing I want to do is do more IT work when I get home. I wonder if I can teach the dogs how to code in Ruby, Pearl, PHP, or HTML5. They're certainly smart enough, but they're pretty lazy. I'd try to teach the cats, but they're cats, they don't even deign to work...unless it's to unravel what's in my knitting bag.

The last of the Diet Pepsi is drained (I wonder if I can get money for product placement on a blog?...hmmmm....) and my brain has walked by, yawning, stretching and heading for a coffee pot. Perhaps it'll finally cooperate and come up with something novel for my first assigned blog spot.