Redrafting and a Question

Here's the latest news on the book front. A few weeks ago I pushed down all the fear and anxiety bubbling up inside of me and passed over my first draft to a friend to read.

I felt a little bit ill. I take criticism very emotionally, and I was worried about how bad my writing was.

Good News: She gave very positive and helpful feedback to make the book make more sense. It wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be. I can actually take feedback quite well, it transpires.
Bad News: She thinks that it needs to be a bit longer in the middle to make the ending more climactic.

So, now it's back to writing. First up is tidying up all the mistakes and typos and plot holes, and second is adding a bit more adventure in the middle section, third is redrafting the new bits, then fourth is handing it over to my second reading volunteer.

All in all, I can't help but feel that it's going quite well. In May, I had never written anything non-academic longer than about 2000 words. Now I've written 31,000 words of children's fiction.

Phew. I hope Josie and Lori like it!

Interesting Fact For Today: The name Irene is derived from Eirene, the Greek Goddess of Peace (Roman equivalent: Pax).

Eirene. She's the best.

Now for the aforementioned question of the blog title:

Can anybody tell me whether there's a statue of Peace in and around the centre of Edinburgh?