Encouraged, inspired, excited.

I am still not telling you my secret. Its a good one though, mortifying, but sort of funny. Very naughty!!

But I did want to share that I got some writing back this week from uni, my young adult unit. The feedback was really good, some excellent suggestions, most of my trouble, my lecturer felt, came from being cramped by the word limit. She said to keep at my writing because my " sense of voice and emotional intensity/anxiety are top notch."

I sent her an email thanking her for the feedback and saying I am going to have a go at extending it into novel length as she suggested, and that I appreciated her critique. I said that I have no idea if I have any talent as such, but that I love writing, so I will do it anyway! She replied with the following:

Hey, for what it's worth, I do think you do have talent as a writer. I'm kind of nervous about putting forth that kind of subjective commentary as part of the assessment comments because they're based on taste rather than the kind of literary criteria I try to focus through when I mark. And to be honest, my taste is a long way from what publishers seem to publish. so much YA is frankly terrible in my view and so I do also feel worried that I'd be off the track in commenting on the quality of your work. but in this format, I'm happy to say I really like it. gawd, put your stuff against (in the fantasy stuff) Eragon, and you're streets ahead - especially in terms of originality. All the writers I know who have made it just suffer through the slog and the humiliation of lots of rejections, lots of rewriting and lots of horrible moments of writers block until they finally crack something that is published. So try to stay emotionally strong and, as you suggest, stay focused on the pleasure you get from the process without over investing in the outcome - recipe for sanity in my humble opinion. keep in touch if you need anything along the way.


In all honesty, its left me gobsmacked and frankly, I think she must have mixed me up with another student! Its inspired me though, I do believe in myself, just have to keep plugging away.