I asked a few friends to take a look at my first few chapters and thus far I've gotten good reviews.
Not to say there aren't things wrong. Two big pieces of advice: I need to have more description of my main characters and there is a major plothole in chapter 5. A very-cool-but-this-makes-no-sense scene. Oops.
I'm a big believer in honesty in criticism. If someone asks me to critique something, I assume they want an honest opinion. This has gotten me in some trouble sometimes. Mostly with clothing shopping. I was saying that a particular cut was unflattering and my friend took it as a criticism of her body. Not my finest hour.
Because I believe in honesty, that means telling what works as well as what doesn't. I'm just as happy to wax enthusiastic about a brilliant turn of phrase or bit of dialogue as I am about nailing repetitious description.
So now I take a pause in my charge forward through Revelations to go back and write a new layer for my first 10 chapters. I'm actually feeling excited about this.
But I'll admit, my biggest control-myself-so-I-don't-geek-out moment? When a writer I really admire, who has had a lot of success, told me that she wouldn't consider me an intermediate writer. That she thought I deserved a higher level. I'm still grinning over that one.
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