Constructive Criticism

Tonight I received my feedback from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel of the Year Award contest.

Those of you who follow the blog know that I didn't make it past the second round. One benefit of making it to the second round, however, is that I received some professional feedback from their ABNA "Expert Reviewers".

After receiving my feedback, I thought over what they told me. I had two reviewers comment. The first reviewer tended to be a little more toward the negative (not in a harsh way, mind you) and I feel like had that reviewer been able to read more than just the excerpt, then his (or her) questions would have been answered. I even thought the "poor choice of language" comment was fair to a point. Devan made much the same comment about Chaos Reborn and The Sixth Sword before he left for Iraq. "It's like everything we write. The beginning we stumble a bit, find our feet and by the end we're running nice and smooth."

So my beginnings need a little bit of work. I'll buy that.

The second reviewer left me feeling pretty good about myself. He (again, or she) felt a strong connection with Sam. He felt a little lost geographically, which is a fair comment since I didn't really delve into that much at all other than to generally imply that Sam lived in the cold northern part of Menahra. The best part was the final comment he left, wherein he told me he couldn't really find any suggestions for improvement because he thought it was a well written and impressive piece.

So cool. I have professional feedback on something I've written. Short as the feedback was, I find it pretty very valuable and food for thought. I also concluded that it wasn't so much that the reviewers didn't like my work but that they liked others better. I'm fine with that (well, sort of. Obviously I'd prefer they picked mine) because, in the end, it is a competition and that's what happens in competitions. Someone has to lose.

There are many who didn't make the cut that are posting on the Amazon ABNA boards and seem pretty upset with their reviews. Some of them were pretty harsh from what I've seen.

It's never fun to hear criticism, especially about something as personal as The Crownless King is to me. However, I found my criticism to be pretty fair and, most importantly, constructive. I appreciate that.

I didn't win this year. I probably won't have anything ready for 2011. But I feel like 2012 I'll take a shot at this again unless something better breaks before then.

Electronic Combat Training

I woke up this morning without power. I don't mean power to get out of bed (though that was lacking just a little bit). No, I'm talking about electricity to turn on the lights. Last week, in an effort to prevent this from happening, the contractors were at the bottom of the hill trimming back the trees to keep them off the power lines.

They missed one. As I rolled down the road with Bryan this morning they were down there removing the tree and fixing the problem. It took a grand total of nearly four hours to restore power, so it wasn't anything more than a minor aggravation in a pretty good day.

I rode with Bryan, our local National Guard recruiter, to Staunton so that he could drop off some paperwork he was required to hand deliver. While in Staunton I participated in Electronic Combat Training (ECT). It's a military term we made up on the spot because what it really means is that we spent more than an hour in the arcade at the mall playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time. Classic arcade game. Very awesome. It made the entire trip worth it.

We also played a couple of first person shooter games to round things out. And since it made us a little later than planned for our workout, we told the third guy who works out with us that we were ECT. We figure he's going to show up at his next drill and ask the Sergeant if he can participate in ECT. It's fifty-fifty as to whether we're going to tell him what ECT means before hand.

A Different Kind Of Alarm Clock

I stayed up late last night to watch the end of the Kansas State - Xavier basketball game. It took two overtimes for the second seeded Kansas State to put away Xavier 101-96 in a thrilling match. The game was everything that's thrilling about sports. Two closely matched teams going down to the wire in a battle that in the end was determined by who had the sheer guts to see it through to the end.

There is a rugged beauty to sports. No, wait, rugged isn't the right word. Perhaps brutal fits better. Let's try again. There's a brutal beauty to sports. There's always two sides struggling to see who is the best on any given day. Sports is Darwinism at its best. Only the best and strongest are allowed out on the court to play and only the best and strongest will walk away with a victory. It's beautiful.

I awoke this rainy Friday morning to a different and more natural kind of beauty: birds singing. Spring has most definitely arrived here in Virginia and one of the tell-tale signs of its long awaited appearance are the birds chirping outside my window. It's usually an altogether pleasant way to begin a day,  but today it was a bit jarring.

As I mentioned, I stayed up late last night to watch the basketball game. I slept in a little this morning before going out to start the Jeep (I always let it warm up for a few minutes before I take off). My head was still down, my brain was still fogged by sleep and I was fervently wishing that I was back in bed. The first sound I hear as I step out my door had to be a mockingbird.

Now, I say it had to be a mockingbird because the last thing this mockingbird had to have heard was a car alarm going off. One of those irritating alarms that goes off because the neighborhood cat jumps on the hood or some other inane reason. And for whatever reason the owner of the car must have taken his sweet time turning it off because this bird was loud, incessant and sounded just like a car alarm.

I didn't even know that was possible.

Rambling

It still seems odd to me that I can walk outside and feel comfortable. After the winter we've had here, every time that I step outside my door I almost hunch my shoulders and expect to be blasted my bitter cold air and falling snow. I don't usually have this feeling because typically I would have spent the winter out in the elements trying to work. About this time each year I can walk outside in short sleeves and be comfortable when the temperatures finally make it back up into the 30s. This year I spent the cold months in the office and then home after being laid off so it's strikingly odd to walk outside and actually be comfortable.

I haven't really made any great strides in any of my projects this week and I find that I'm OK with that. Sometimes you just have to sit back and wait for inspiration to hit. I've spent some time reading and looking into new music, both that I want to listen to and want to play. Right now I'm listening to We Are The Fallen's new single and so far I'm not really impressed. It's good, but not great. They've taken the American Idol contestant Carly Smithson and mixed her with some former members of Evanescence. What you get is almost an Evanescence knock-off band with a lead singer who, even though she can sing really well, is no Amy Lee.

I'm writing today just to be writing. I don't really have much to say, other than I'm hoping my book comes in the mail today and that I'm really looking forward to some homemade hamburgers this evening. We have the tax information figured out and it's a matter now of taking them to be processed (which is good considering the deadline is fast approaching). Oh, and apparently there's a comic book convention at the Salem Civic Center next Saturday. That's exciting (yes, I'm a nerd).

Some days I just write to be writing, to practice the art of putting one word down on paper after another. I don't always have something to say when I start out, but often I find something to say before I finish. Obviously, this really wasn't one of those times where I found something to say. So I think I'll just go do my Krogering and look forward to those burgers.