Part III - My Masterpiece

"Who do you plan to write for?"

I stared blankly at the table.

"Like, what audience?" CH cocked her head to one side. "Adults? Children?"

This was a question I wasn't quite prepared to answer. I honestly wasn't sure. When I wrote my manuscript, I hadn't written for an audience. I had written for me.

"Adults." I sounded more confident than I felt. The girl in my book was a teenager--so if I went with the general rule that the protagonist is the same age as the reader, than my book would have been written for youth--but the book took place during the Civil War, so this set her at a time when people became adults much younger than they do today. So maybe she was an adult... I was confused.

CH and I met a few weeks after exchanging books. We were sitting across each other at a little table for two at the Java Hut, a cute cafe in town. It wasn't going quite as I had planned.

I loved her book, to put it simply. It was a true-to-life tale about a teenage girl heading off to college much like the one we both went to. It was current. It was witty. It was fun... the type of book I would have devoured when I was a teenager.

Who am I kidding? I'd still read a book like hers.

Long story short, when I wrote out my critique, I gave what I thought were raving reviews. Maybe there were a few areas I thought could have been fleshed out a bit, but it really had solid bones. I guess when I accepted mine, I thought I'd see equally praising compliments--reviews worthy of a spot on the back of a book.

Okay. To be fair, CH did have a lot of positive things to say. And the comments that weren't filled with roses and fairies--well, those were positive too. Not that I realized that at the moment. In the midst of my first, real book critique--the first moment my "child" had ever gone out into the world to be analyzed by an unbiased reader--well, I wasn't prepared for what I'd get. I wasn't prepared for constructive criticism, nor the important questions a writer should ask herself.

With this sort of thinking, it shouldn't be a surprise that I was upset by the simple question of, "Who do you plan to write for?" I left a little deflated.

 However, that feeling didn't last for long. I will forever be grateful to CH for asking me quality questions that day, because they are the reason I began to treat my writing as a craft to be honed and shaped.

I realized that, first of all, you must have thick skin if you want to write. Just like any artist, creating something means taking a piece of your soul and holding it out to the world for examination. And for me--now--it is not so much about wanting to be validated. Now, it is about sharing.

I also discovered that this story I had written was not set in concrete. It's not like a sidewalk that shows the deep impressions of paw prints from some unleashed dog, years and years later. The plot can be changed. The characters can deepen. Point of view can be shifted. Structure and form can transform.

My words can be ALIVE!

A new adventure and purpose was set before me. I felt wings for the first time.