Reviewed For The Very First Time

I recently joined the www.youwriteon.com competition that involves a major book and a whole lot of blah. The basic idea is to upload a couple of chapters from your novel, or soon-to-be novel and let people review it as much as you review the ones that are sent to you. Thus a ranking and well, you can figure out the rest right?

So yesterday I get my very first review ever!

It was from a writer who claimed to have been travelling Africa for the past 20 years or something along the lines. My imagination gave me the image of a middle aged dude with a great big moustache, tanned complexion dressed in an outfit of ochre similar to Tintin when he was in the Congo. – You know, hat and all?

Clearly this writer, be it a man or a woman, knew what he/she was talking about. I noticed that he – let’s make it ‘he’ so he fits with my Tintin in Congo image? – had uploaded five or six texts into youwriteon and had probably had them published already. That’s far cry from little ol’ me who had barely finished one measly book! He told me that my writing was too damn poetic for my own good, too lyrical that it takes your mind right out of the story! He also said that I had inundated the review chapters with so many similes that he drowned...literally.

And as if that wasn’t constructively critical enough, he went on to quote the most quoted cliché of all literary clichés, ‘Show, don’t tell!’

Okay. So I was humbled... and totally freaked out!

Finally, he quoted my text, “‘What? What rubbish is this...’ I am inclined to use that last line myself!”

AAOUUCCHHH!!

Okay, so I am more than humbled. I am flat on the floor like a human pancake! Squished, destroyed, back to feeling like that naughty little girl back in the Primary that teachers used to say was ‘Too Big For Her Boots!’

Tough love.

So my very first review was a little bit below the line of ‘cruelty.’ But cut the guy some slack right? He doesn’t know I am 21 going on 22, unable to attend college, stuck at home trying to teach myself how to become the next big writer of the century!

That makes me feel better, and so does posting this on a blog that nobody but me and my dear best friend – once I send you the link which I will today – reads!

But then again, I am a step closer to my dream than I was post-humiliating review, right? So rejoice! And let’s get this story on the road!