But let me tell you I definitely did not start with revision, oh no, I dove head long into novice novelist regrets - I sent out my query (resume of the book) right after one quick pass of an edit, lets just say my cork board is covered with form rejection slips. Each one well deserved and now I stare at them and remember - slow down dear padawan, be patient and learn your inner most ways, feel the force or more directly learn what the heck you are doing.
So this I did, kind of, I went out finding any living thing that would be interested in reading a very rough version of what I believe to be an awesome book. I found a few suckers (I mean wonderful, deep caring people who would like me to succeed). The stats read like this: Husband loves it (of course), offspring read parts and love it (of course), close friends will not touch it with a ten-foot pole in fear of having to tell me bad news (of course). However, I did one (I believe) smart thing and advertised through social media to my friends that I needed 14 to 18 years old kids to read my story - humans I didn't know. Now my stats looked different, not everyone read the book but those who did (9 people including a few adults), and finished it, loved it (or so they say). Now you can't take that to an agent or publisher but I can use it for my drive and determination to work on the story and fine tune it.
I did receive wonderful feedback from all who did read it and I asked some very specific pointed questions of each of them to know areas of improvement. One big standout that I heard from each of the nine people, plus husband and offspring, "I can imagine the place and see everything going on - this should be a movie". Now in the literary world of mine a movie is okay but for someone to read the story and be transported into it is the meat and potatoes.
So now I continue on my fifth edit and work on the writing - trying to bring the book alive. I hope in the near future it will be on a shelf in a bookstore near you.
