Sunday, May 23, 2010

adventures in critiques

Authonomy Update: 71 :)


The last couple weeks were adventurous for Pearl. I promised I would blog about it earlier, and now here it is, Sunday night, two weeks later....

My family is watching the last episode of Lost (after a busy day of church, parties and a piano recital), and I'm revising and editing, oh, and blogging. :)

Cool Adventure #1:


I know this seems like my blog is turning into a Nathan Bransford marathon, but this is really cool. He is doing a 1st page critique on Mondays and last week, Pearl got in. Basically, he allowed his blog followers to critique my first page, and after awhile, he chimed in with a red letter critique.

There was a lot of banter about the writing, especially about dream sequences (should a book start with one or not). People seemed to be somewhat divided, but most said no to the dream (although they seemed to like the writing).

You can check out the comments, if you want, by heading over to his blog and clicking on last Monday's post.

What I learned...


Writing is totally subjective. Who knew? :) What one person likes, another hates. What one person says to scratch, another says to keep.

I, as the author, have to be willing to listen to my peers, while at the same time, listening to my gut. Sometimes that's hard to do.

So....

Pearl got some exposure. Wahoo!!!

Nathan has over 3600 blog followers, and he is well respected as an agent. I'm still thinking about whether or not to query him.

And...I got a couple new followers here (Hello! and Welcome!).

Not a bad day's work, I say!!


Cool Adventure #2:


The SCWBI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) Montana chapter had a workshop in Bozeman on Sat. At the last minute, the head of the chapter called me and said there was an opening for the agent who was presenting to do a critique on the first 10 pages of Pearl.

I quickly whipped up a query and sent the first pages. My mom (bless her) drove over to Bozeman and sat in on a couple hours of the workshop and paid for my critique.

The agent will contact me and hold a Skype conference call with me soon.

Cool Adventure #3

I met with an editor friend of mine a couple weeks ago. He doesn't edit my genre, but he has read a significant portion, and he had some great pointers and insights.

So that is two Agents and one editor in the last couple weeks who have seen Pearl and critiqued it. Pretty exciting stuff!!!

Cool Adventure #4:


Pearl is on Facebook and Twitter. Look for the links on the side of the blog.

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