Five Year Writing Goal
I’m taking part in Misha and Beth’s Five Year Project and my five-year goal is to write a novel and get it published. This is my update on progress this month.
Feedback on The Reluctant Scribe
I have sent my novel of for another review, to an adult historical fiction author. Overall, her comments were very positive: “you quickly drew me into this very different world and in no time I was happily living alongside your characters.”
I had asked her to comment specifically on genre and point of view, and these were her main thoughts and recommendations:
- It’s not a children’s novel.
- If I want to give the novel more ‘popular’ appeal, I must quicken the pace and heighten the tension in the dramatic sections.
- But if writing for the ‘literary’ genre, I need to make the language more abstract and complex.
- By switching to 3rd person narrator, I could keep the innocence of the child’s point of view, but escape from the restrictions of childlike language and understanding.
This advice has been sitting in my to-do box for some weeks. I am hoping for a magic flash of inspiration – following which I will see a clear way forward. But, in the meantime, we have been enjoying a very fine English summer and I have been concentrating on my long-distance walking.
Ruth Livingstone 
Those are some interesting remarks. Good luck in your rewrites.
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Oh boy, writing. Too bad creativity can’t be something that can be turned on and off like a switch. Keep up the good work, though. It sounds like you’re on track for you goal.
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