I’ve received my initial feedback from one of the readers who has received Bloodie Bones and I’ve now agreed with TLC who their reader will be.
To recap: I’m receiving a read from TLC as part of the mentoring scheme (Kindly sponsored by Writing East Midlands… just to give them another plug!) but I had concerns that they wouldn’t be able to allocate a reader with experience of the horror genre and so through WEM I approached a horror writer (who I can reveal is Mark Morris) who agree to provide feedback as well (For a fee…. so don’t go drowning Mark in your manuscripts just because he’s a good egg).
Mark has come back with his analysis and a suggestion we meet up to discuss his feedback in greater depth, which we’ll be doing later this month. But in the interim I have his comments to look at, all seven pages of them.
Deep breath.
So let’s trot out one of the aphorisms about becoming a writer: that you need to develop a thick skin. It’s hard to put your work out there and then read what someone else has to say about it. It’s even harder when you read what they say and the little voice inside your head is going “Yup, thought that might crop up. Yup, reckoned you were gonna come unstuck there. Yup, I told you that was a problem.” (In case you’re unaware, my internal voice appears to be an elderly gentleman from the deep south) .
Another deep breath.
I received the response from Mark and damned if I didn’t recognised many of the points he raised as concerns I’d had but (and get this, because this is learning in action!) I hadn’t had the courage or conviction to do face them. I’d buried my internal critic up to his neck in wet cement and then tried to pile another load of debris on top of him. And it worked. Well, it almost worked, there was still some wriggling (which is probably what spurred me on to be so adamant about the need for an opinion from someone within the genre) but I thought I’d done a fairly good job in burying the bodies. Reading Mark’s analysis told me I was kidding no-one but myself, the bodies were still lying out on the freeway for everyone to witness.
I have to be honest, Mark’s analysis was hard to read. Hard because it demonstrated where I am as a writer and where I need to be. Hard because I recognised it was true. And perhaps hardest because it challenges me to look at Bloodie Bones and consider whether the flaws I have been studiously ignoring are so fundamental that it renders the novel un-readable.
Now you see why that was a tough document to read, and why authors need a thick skin?
So how did I respond? I picked up my pen, edited some of the short stories that have been waiting patiently in the “to do” pile for the last few months, and wrote a new short story. And at some point soon, when I find the courage, I’ll pick up Mark’s feedback and read it again and again and again.
