I submitted my final thesis paper on time, Sunday, February 28, 2016. I was extremely pleased that it was a completed novel, including those grand words: THE END at the fini. I have been allowing my brain to start considering other characters for different stories and making tentative mental outlines with the intention of placing them in Scrivener. Started getting a pretty decent impression of Robert’s love interest and started thingking more about who she is. Â Logged onto the school site last night and discovered my thesis paper had been graded. On the ‘up’ side, I got 505 points out of a possible 505 and passed the course with a solid ‘A’. Awesome, yay me! On the ‘down’ side [I guess] was a generalized statement saying two areas seemed ‘rushed’ and need more work, flesh out characterization [characters were established many chapters ago] and setting. The comments actually confused me, more than anything… I will say she is correct on some areas feeling ‘rushed’, I kind of felt that after writing them….
So now I need to pull Lynette and Lachlan back into my brain and do a complete re-read so I can rework and revise the entire book, but mainly focus on the last five chapters – those are the ones not peer reviewed. Not a big deal, actually. Revision and editing are part of the process to complete a piece. I know this. I expect this.
Please understand, I’m not bitching here. I anxiously awaited the final critique – more than the grade – to have the comments and review to know what areas presented problems to readers. I don’t know, perhaps I expected the detailed comments such as my peers rendered over the last twenty weeks – which is what the instructor had done, as well. And I didn’t get that. Just a fairly generalized paragraph saying ‘it felt rushed.’ But no details where or when this feeling came about, so I’m a bit confused. *sighs* So, one option I have is to send the final five chapters to the peers I worked with, the closest. Another option is to send the entire novel [I’ll be doing this, anyway! *laughs*] to my daughter, for her views as a reader. And of course, doing a re-read for myself and see if I see the areas or area generalized in the paragraph my instructor gave; it’s been only four days since I completed the book, so actually kind of early to do a re-read, in my opinion.
Okay then, have some mundane things to do [grocery shopping!] and would like to get my hair cut, although I’m not sure I’ll do that today, and go to Starbucks! With that said, I am so outtie….