Its amazing. I can hardly believe just how WONDERFUL it feels!!!

Yesterday, I visited LWC to sit in on the meet and enjoy the readings. I’m sorting out membership now, just need to pay up and that will add me to the forum and mailing lists and all sorts of other gubbins. But yesterday I decided that the time had finally come to read something of my own.

Last time I read something, it was a joint piece that me and my dear, dear cackly friend have been writing together on Facebook. Its been a while since I’ve written anything for that, really, so I really should look into that, but in the meantime, I’ve had NaNo to deal with.
Anyways, yesterday I took LWC a sample from the first chapter of Silk Over Razor Blades. It was the sample I sent to Rod for him to take a peep at and decide how my writing style and sophistication suited the group. It had a couple of my corrections and edits in it. I read the section just after Ian and Nick finish filming and Ileandra is complaining about her costume for the club. Ray comes home and splutters all over her before revealing he is playing a horrible joke.

I read that and stood back and almost cringed waiting for the feedback.

IT WAS BRILLIANT! I can’t believe it – I guess I should, confidence girlie! – but it was all positive and constructive and wonderful.

They picked points that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time (or at least since Rod brought them up).

• Sentence structure (can be unnecessarily long and filled with slightly too big words)
• Keeping an eye on POV as it flicked to Grace for a short while, instead of sticking with Ileandra
• Confusion as Grace enters the scene as she doesn’t have an intro

And then they talked about stuff I hadn’t even thought of:

• Letting my dialogue tell more of the story; I have a tendency to repeat with narrative what I’ve already covered in dialogue

And yet, more than that, was the fact that they brought some wonderful comments about the way the scene itself seemed to work:

• The characters have clear relationships that are interesting and have room to grow, that will – hopefully – be explored as the book goes on
• The dialogue is ‘very good’ and is very real and believable
• The story is interesting (and they want to know more – waaah!)

So there we are. 😀
Be smiles and cheesy grins all around. Part of me isn’t too happy that I’m so thrilled at what these people think and yet the other part of me is sure that this is all part of the growth process. Its part of what makes me a writer. Because its not all going to be like this. There’s going to be scummy days and poor feedback and people who hate what I write. But I have to take that with the good. Its what I’ve chosen to do.