On getting unexpected feedback...

I'm always pleased to have someone read my work, it gives me thrills to know that someone is moved by my words and the images that I paint with them.

I don't overly pimp my work, I don't want to force anyone out there to read my words if they don't want to, I'd rather they read them because they were generally interested rather than from a sense of duty.

My long time friend from Uni Emma read my work recently and she enjoyed it and that's lovely, but the needy irrational part of my brain says that Emma only likes it because she's your friend. What a lovely brain I have. That is beside the point, Emma passed on some of my work to one of her friends who I don't know, I can't know as they live in Australia and Emma then passed on her assessment of my writing back to me.

At first, I was dismayed, I like to have a semblance of control as to who get's to read at the moment, I know I'm deluding myself but I cling to it non-the-less. I get butterflies when I let people I know read it anyway, because I feel deep down I want people to like me and like what I do.

This is what the friend of a friend wrote:

From someone who loves writing, I think your friend has a way of just going straight into the heart of the readers and just leaving a mark. That’s how I felt while I was reading her two pieces.

I like how it’s almost feel like real- the characters and that you can feel their pain. I don’t know her but I think she likes to write about pain and hope, and strength. Very intuitive.

She also has a rich depth of vocabulary. I always think it’s very hard to describe something- a place, a person, a movement, etc. to the point Where the readers can feel that you’re actually witnessing it, but she has it.

The only thing that I think might be worth revisiting are some of the sentences can be really long, and can be a bit distracting.. but that’s about it.."

For a while I thought I had lost the ability to write and to write something convincingly but then I thought: if I can move someone I've never met; who has no vested interest in being nice about my work then maybe there's some actual talent there and I just need to apply it.

Yes I have a long way to go, my punctuation and grammar can get a little sketchy but at the heart of what makes a piece of fiction interesting, apparently, that is something I can do.

I'm still not going to pimp my work overly, I'm sure you don't want to hear me banging on all the time, but I'm going to post more of it and I'm going to hone the skills I've got.