My Critique from Colleen Coble

I mentioned I'm going to be attending the ACFW conference next month, God willing. One of the perks of conferences is the paid critique from an author, agent or editor. Somehow I was blessed enough to end up with award winning author,Colleen Coble. Yey me.

She graciously critiqued my chapters ahead of schedule so I, and the others, could tweak the proposals prior to pitching at the conference.
That was thoughtful, no?

Anyway, I'm in a tough critique group that will rip my work when it needs to be ripped. My skin's gotten pretty tough over the years.

As I opened my attachment from Ms. Coble, I braced myself for such a ripping. But, instead I was pleasantly surprised.

She typed: "FABULOUS PROLOGUE! MAKES ME HUNGRY FOR MORE JUST AS IT SHOULD. GREAT WORD CHOICES AND CONTRASTING IMAGES." and "Great writing! You’re tremendously talented with super word choices and a very compelling writing style."

Hooray!! Writers are an insecure bunch and I'm no exception. So, I can't tell you how good that made me feel. Like maybe I'm not a hack that needs to give it up. You know?

Of course, she did find a few things to pick at. Some of which I had already fixed after I sent it to her.

Let's see..She didn't like me using "Nan" instead of "Nana" outside of dialogue. Thought it looked like a typo. She wasn't the first critter to say that, so guess it goes.

She also thought I should make my protagonist, Valencia, take a little longer to come to the conclusion her nana was demon possessed. That ones a little harder to fix. Again, she wasn't the first one that said that,so I need to take another look.

Oh yeah, and this one's embarrassing: I misspelled "Prologue". I think I spelled it Progogue. UHHH! Don't ask me why my eyes or spellchecker missed that.

I sent it out to my agent that way. Maybe I need to read Noah Lukeman's, The First Five Pages again?

Oh yeah, and once again my formatting got screwy in the translation. It looks fine on my end, but when I e-mail it, the indentions move.

She offered me a suggestion on how to fix that and if it doesn't work, offered to let me send her the whole thing and fix it for me! What a nice lady.

I think I'm doing something small wrong in my wordprocessing that's messing up, but haven't figured it out just yet.

Anyway, there were a few other things, nothing big.

Oh wait, there was one big thing. She said as she was reading, it bothered her that she thought Nana was a Christian yet was demon possessed. Actually, we find out Nana was not a Christian, but she thought I should find a way to show that right away as not to turn off readers who might be thinking my theology is off. I can fix that with a well placed comment. No problem.

I asked her if it would be alright to share with you her comments and she said:

"Of course you can share whatever you want, Gina! I really love your writing style. You're going to make it, girlfriend. It's hard to find an unpublished writer with such a vivid writing style. You've got great word choices and similies that really made the text sing."

Don't worry that I might get a big head. When I sit down to write my new chapter tomorrow (today I'm working at the clinic), all the insecurities will come crawling back, with pin in hand, ready to bust my bubble.

But, for today, toot, toot! (that's not me flatulating, btw, it's me blowing my own horn.:)