Today I received an 11-page letter via email about my writing.
It turns out that I’m not completely out of my depth when it comes to writing. I received many positive comments about both my critical paper and my manuscript. I wasn’t necessarily looking for accolades, but I suppose I wanted to know the answer to the question, “Do I have what it takes?” I completely understand that this is a learning process, and everyone who goes through the program will get better. Still, a person may love to play baseball, and may be willing to work extremely hard at it, but nevertheless will not have a chance of making it to the big leagues. I was hopeful that my writerly lump of clay was sufficiently adequate to mold into something.
I think that it is. My advisor wrote:
You are a gifted writer, with great instincts for character, and for the subjects that will entrance children.
Huh. How about that?
This is not to say that I don’t have a great deal of room to improve. It turns out that the areas that I identified myself as growth areas are, in point of fact, areas that I need to grow in. For example, I use too much of a teacher voice, place too much emphasis on adults, and overwrite some scenes. I’m much chagrined by the last one, because I am always espousing the belief that we need to have more faith in the ability of child readers. Oops.
However, most of what ails my manuscript can be fixed with fairly straightforward revisions (and lots of cutting.) The letter I received contained an incredible amount of good advice that was tailored specifically to my own work. It truly is like having your own editor. It’s awesome. I’m waiting for my manuscript to arrive in the mail, because it contains actual line edits. I can’t wait to get started on the revisions (which seems weird to say) because I feel like I have some true guidance.
That being said, my assignment is to rewrite what I have so far, and cut it down from sixty-seven pages to twenty. Ha! Then I have to add twenty more pages, and I’ll have to make sure that those are far more tightly written.
Onward!
