You Live and Learn

I have no idea when I first heard 'you live and learn', but I hear it in my mother's voice with that tone of evident surprise, like 'Well, I never!'

Today I learnt a lot from going to a postgrad writing group at Edith Cowan University and listening as they - six ladies and one gentleman - responded to the first draft of the first chapter of a novel I am writing. In the chapter a girl of around twelve or thirteen has run away and is living in a city bushland setting with an old tramp. Later, she is found to be pregnant when captured by the authorities, so I thought I needed to make her start her period in chapter one ... Well, I got a lot of things wrong! The critics were very subdhued at first but as the various mistakes were paraded, they pointed out more and more. By the way, they had the text for over 24 hours before hand, so it wasn't off-the-cuff criticism.

I thought I knew enough, having been married at one stage for many decades and not exactly being a monk all my life - but I still got a lot wrong. (Thanks for being there, Ben! I think you knew about as much as I did ...)

Which only goes to prove the value of such groups. The writing of it I can handle, and we did discuss style, etcetera, briefly, but the facts which I thought were 'obvious' were not credible and in some cases were down right wrong. Secret women's business indeed ...

How long to make the chapters, whether I had put too much detail in and raced it or slowed it down with too much description - all these things were also covered. I was a very lucky author to have such concentrated attention on my work. The participants were all PhD candidates themselves, and I think all were Writing candidates, although not all were writing novels.

One or two had not heard the plot outline, so I went through that - which they all thought was dark and bleak, whereas I see it as one woman's heroic quest to stay above ground with her head held high even when fortune frowns heavily upon her. Perhaps it will all be in the writing ... Wish me well.