Hello Stranger!

Yep, its me. I know, you hardly recognize me what with all the not posting and the beard. But don't you worry now. The beard goes on Sunday. Whoosh! Outta here! You see, I've just finished my holidays and I don't shave so very often on my holidays but now that I'm back at work - its back to once a week.

Also, I have set myself the lofty goal of posting at least twice a week. Actually, my aim is to post at least 100 times over the year so I will have to do some catch up to make up for January. But the good news is there is a ton of news. And some of the news itself is also good.

I noticed that my last post was in September last year. Quite a lot has happened as you can well imagine. For starters, I finished the first edit of my novel. It needed quite a lot of editing and it still does. But at least it's now in a fit state for others. So I passed it around a select few people. Obviously DW was the first to get a copy and she dragged herself all the way through several pages and even nodded several times. After asking me several times not to watch her while she read, I left her alone to "enjoy" the story. A few weeks later (it's not a comic) she finished and nodded several more times. Actually, she really enjoyed it and we chatted about what happens in the alluded to sequel. And despite my insecurities, I think she really did genuinely like it.

So the next person to read it was a friend who is also a writer. She also enjoyed it but had a few additional comments about structure, character arc, grammar and so on. It was very constructive feedback but all I can remember her saying is "It's great but its crap and here's why..." I suspect my mind is not remembering the event accurately. Anyway, that was before the first edit. At least the grammar and spelling have improved slightly.

More recently my sister, also a writer, reviewed the work. She had very positive feedback and also some very useful suggestions for improvements. She also went to the trouble of "marking" the first couple of chapters, to help me get ready for sending them off to a publisher/agent/whoever. Don't get me wrong, this was at my behest. She pulled those pages to pieces. Not a single sentence got away without comment. Well, maybe one or two. I'm just glad she didn't use red pen or it would have looked like the paper was actually bleeding. Still, that was only a first impression and actually reading the comments made far more sense than looking at the page as a whole. I guess its no worse than an editor would do, and perhaps a lot kinder. In fact, my sister may well make an excellent editor, should she ever wish to follow that path.

So now I have to incorporate some modifications into the second edit and start send those first few chapters out into the wild. I'll let you know how I go.

Now I know you are probably less interested in my novel and more interested in the goings on of Princess and Little Man, and possibly DW. Well, so much has happened that I will have to break it into parts. So tune in again next week for another Total Bern Out!

Ciao!

Thought for the Day: One down. 99 to go.