Today’s reflection was originally wrote on the back of an envelope of a card I received this week, while sat on the top deck of the #12 bus from Trafalgar Square (central London) heading home. You can see the original on the right hand side above, my scribbles are hardly readable even to myself, as the bus ride was not the smoothest! Anyway, I thought I’d blog the reflection this evening.To the left the other blue envelope is a response to a writing prompt (from the book I picked up today which you can also see in the picture). I got creative and responded to a prompt on my journey home on the bus.
Dear ”Diary”,
I feel a real mixture of emotions today don’t get me wrong it has been a good day, I went to book club to meet up with my fellow book worm buddy’s to discus the books read over the last month ( sadly I never got to finish reading this month’s books due to working on my own manuscript I finally submitted 33 days early!). Anyway, I had those giddy feelings as I walked into Waterstones again ( the UK’s largest/major book store chain) knowing that in just 2 months I’d have my very own book in a store/ published. It was a quiet afternoon at Waterstones in central London today, not much of a crowd in -store. Maybe as the weather in London today was nice this morning.
While looking around Paperchase for a birthday card mum, I treated myself to a book ” 642 thinks to write about” a thick book with writing prompts in. I’m super excited! I think I need to slow down with how many of these books I buy, I already have one with 365 prompts.
Today, I also received some very positive feedback from a good friend of mine who read my sample chapters, the one thing I’m paranoid about in my writing ( typos) she spotted! But that happens when you’re up writing at 3am; according to her apparently it did not spoil my story or take way anything from it. She said ( about the chapters she read) ” it’s a good introduction”, ” I was gripped right from the beginning ” and ” I would like to read more” now if you know my friend I’ll call her Ms X she’s a hardcore critic when it comes to writing! Probably as she’s a writer herself and is writing her own book which I can’t wait to read. To hear this feedback from Ms X really helped to boost my confidence and reduce a little bit of my nerves around my first novel she ” liked Kate and could identify with her” ( my heroine) and she ” hated Danny” ( one of the heros) which is exactly how I want readers to feel while reading, I intended for my characters to come across like this.
I gave myself a pat on the back after hearing this, I did kick myself for the minor typos and said ” Oh no I’ll go back and edit some more” the girls at book club looked at me like I’d grown a 2nd head or something all shouted ” NO” ” leave it so readers can see the progress” ” it’s with your editor now spotting typos is their job”. As tempting as it is to go back I won’t I’ll focus on the next idea I’m creating instead.
*Kim looks out the window* London can be so pretty I’m just going over Westminster Bridge( a land mark I used in my book) it’s packed with tourists with selfie sticks trying to take a snap with Big Ben in the background, tour groups walking along . ( Here I ran out of envelope to write on :D)
In a nutshell, today on reflection from hearing some positive feedback I’m a LITTLE less nervous about unleashing my work to the world to read, I have to get used to it it’s too late now it’s with the publisher no going back or changing anything major at this point. I am also feeling extremely creative there are some excite writing prompts in my book, I can’t wait to get stuck in and practice improving my skills.
Author, Kim Knight 