The Eye of the Tiger

I faced one of my biggest fears Saturday afternoon and I am quite proud of myself.

As you know I joined Critique Circle a little while ago so that I can get critiques and feedback from other writers. I submitted the first chapter of my novel for review, and it came into the review queue early last week. By Thursday I had gotten 3 critiques. I was too nervous to even log onto the site until Saturday.

With shaking hands and shortness of breath - and feeling as though I might toss my Panera Bread cookies - I finally brought up one of the critiques and forced myself to read it.

And you know what? It wasn't bad. It wasn't painful or humiliating, and in fact it renewed my confidence in my writing skillz. The people who critiqued me were really supportive in the way they left their feedback, and provided some really good ideas and suggestions for improvements.

The scariest part came when one of the critiquer's opening comments were: "I do not like this genre and I do not expect to enjoy the work."

What...an a-hole.

But he pointed out some grammatical errors, which was fine because I don't pretend that grammar is my strong suit. Let's be real; I went to school in Texas. I barely know the difference between a pronoun and a proverb. So any suggestions on how to improve the structure and strength of my sentences was warmly welcomed. However, this guy's closing comments were what really gave me the boost in confidence I needed. He said:

"I do not like this type of story as a rule - but this one is the exception. VERY engaging, fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it."

How cool is that?

I don't mean to be braggadocios but, it is such an incredible feeling to have my hard work, this labor of love validated and appreciated like that. It makes me thing that I really, actually could do this. And I hope to have you with me every step of the way!

Speaking of having you with me....I'd like to know who all of your are. I'd love to see your smiling face or anonymous picture pop up over there on the side underneath the word FOLLOWERS. So without further ado, I would like to formally invite you to sign up with Blogger and become an official follower, if you have not already. As I mentioned in my last post, in order to get a publisher interested I have to demonstrate that I have people who like what I write. And a great way to do that is to wow them with my awesome followers. The more followers I have, the more impressed the publisher is.

And if I get published, I'm throwing a ballin' party - you can consider the Followers list the guest list. ;)

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for reading! :)