write a book

I plan to spend my holidays on a small, isolated island, where there are no cars, no shops, just a few cottages and a few people. Then I plan to do some work on my writing-project.
I have a first draft of book one and 2/3 of book two in a three-volume series. I have to have a long period of undisturbed time to be able to finish this. It is almost impossible to do it beside a full time work and living in a family.
Then maybe in November I can participate in NaNoWriMo again and make a first draft of book number three.
I really want to do this, it will make me very happy, even if I do not manage to get the books published.

It is just that other things have been taking up a lot of time lately, and I am still waiting for feedback from my friend.

Now I feel that I have really got the text and the characters out of my system, so I will be able to read it again with a little more critical distance, and hopefully it will be easier to see what ought to be changed.

I am so eager to hear her opinion. We will be seeing each other again in the beginning of november, then I will get her comments. I have also found another very well-read friend who will do me the same favour. And then I think the big re-write session will be in december.
The longer I wait, the more I get the feeling that I am reading somebody elses manuscript – I forget things and sometimes get almost surprised when I read my own text. Not bad, I think. But maybe not good enough..

But he hardly said anything but “I liked it”. I thought that he would have lots of good advice for me based on his reading experiences, but no. Would you have read it if I had not been the author? I asked. Yes, he said, it was exciting. That was about all I managed to get out of him. I guess it was not too bad. (he is 15 years old)
I had waited so long and did not do anything with my manuscript in the meantime. But I learnt something from it. I can not expect other people to be as interested in my project as I am myself. My friend who also promised to read the manuscript has not yet returned it (it was more than a month ago). I had decided to wait with the second draft untill I got the response from these two readers, but now I feel that I just have to get on working – I can still make use of her comments when / if she returns my manuscript. Now I have had quite a long break, it is 1 1/2 month since I finished the first draft, so today I read the first forty pages, and it was a very nice experience, actually I did not find much that I wanted to change. I will read through the whole story this coming week and then decide if I shall do some major rewriting or not.

My son has not yet finished reading my book. I am sure that he does not understand how important his feedback is to me. I don’t want to push him, this should be fun, not just another thing he has to do.
He has been in bed with something which resembles the flu for some days, so it is understandable that he has not had the energy to read.
I am also waiting very eagerly for response from my friend, the librarian, who promised to read and comment. She has also had some health problems recently.
I have to understand that may book may not be as important to other people as it is to me…
I feel that I really need some more feedback, it is difficult for me to understand how an unknown reader will take to my book, I am to much involved to be objective. Is it good or is it not? I am not sure.
Maybe I must set a date and say that when this date comes, I will begin the rewrite. I have another person who has offered to read and comment, I will give her a copy when I see her next week. She is a fast reader. I think by October 1.st I should be ready to go on with the second draft. I think that I may have to change the plot somewhat, to incorporate some new ideas, but I keep large parts of the main story and the characters.

He is usually reading quite a lot, he has been through Lord of the Rings, Harrry Potter, His dark materials (the books about Lyra) and many other books in the fantacy /adventure field, so he should be very well qualified to give an opinion on behalf of the intended readers.
I am very eager to know what he thinks about the book and what suggestions he has to improve it. I already got some good comments while he was looking through the index on page 1. “This will not do,” he said, “the titles of the chapters are revealing too much of what is going to happen.” I agree with him, I will find some better titles.
I am away from home for the weekend, and when I return Sunday evening, he will probably have finished reading it.

I wrote down what I remembered from the feed-back I got from my husband after he had read the whole book (he was not altogether positive), and then I asked him to sit down with me so we could go through it once more, and he could confirm if I had understood him right, or maybe correct misunderstandings and fill out any missing details.
That was extremely useful. When we began to talk about the book, he showed me that he was in possesion of a hitherto unknown insight in the mechanics of writing. He made some very intelligent and helpful comments, and added quite a lot of depth and details to his first comments, that I had written down.
One of his main points was that I must decide if I want to write a story that almost could be true, (which was what I had in mind) or if I am in “Harry Potter-land”, where everything is possible. In his opinion some elements of the story were to much “Harry Potter”.

I got very useful feedback from my daughter, she is the right age. (the same as one of the main characters in my book, 17 years) I may have to make the heroine a little less perfect, in order to make it possible for young girls of the same age to identify with her.

Two days ago I gave the first draft of my book to a friend. Now I am waiting eagerly to hear what she thinks of it. Of course, she may have other things to do than read right now (I can not imagine what could be more important…)
Another of my BookCrossing friends also voluntered to read it, I just have to make another copy for her.

My husband has almost finished reading it now, he does not love it, that much is evident. But he has never been reading fantacy-books.

I really need some feedback before I go on writing. I need to know if I am on the right track, or completely out in the woods. I am not afraid of putting a lot of work into it, but I have to be convinced that it is developing in the right direction.

Tomorrow I will give the manuscript to a friend, who is going to read and comment. The last few days I have had a feeling that the book is really not good enough, but if I want feedback, I just have to let it go. At least I managed to go through the first 100 pages and correct spelling-errors, I added page-numbers, and I wrote on the front page “First draft, please not distribute” – quite unnecessary,it is not as if it was the first draft of Harry Potter, book 7. Who would want to read my book at this stage….
At least the manuscript looks clean and orderly, without too many spelling-errors. I know it is not perfect, but it is a start. And I am full of ideas for the rewrite, but I will wait for my friends comments before I start.
It is quite hard to sit down to write after a full days work, but it is not impossible. :)