Feedback from my mum

While I was writing my recent posts on Giving and Receiving Feedback on your writing, I was reminded of the time I showed my mother the completed manuscript of The Flame Tree.

Predictably, as my mum, she loved it. “It’s lovely, darling. It’s beautiful. You write so well.” etc etc etc. Which is what you would expect - and what I did expect from my mum. So in terms of constructive and critical feedback, it wasn’t much use.

What I didn’t expect was when she started to give me specific feedback on one particular scene. It began innocently enough. “You know that bit where Luke and Jasmine get it together at last? At Luke’s house - after the landslide?”

“Yeah?” I nodded without taking it in fully.

“Well, I don’t think they would wait so long to make love…”

Eh, what? She had my attention now.

“That scene is a bit slow. Not realistic-lah. He wouldn’t be all so gentlemanly, you know what I mean? And she wouldn’t be so shy-shy like that.”

Er, I wasn’t sure I was actually hearing this.

“Yah, they just faced this life and death situation, right? They nearly died, right? People want to have sex after they survive something like that. It’s natural. They won’t be able to control themselves…”

“Um, Mum, er…”

“Yah, he would be just desperate to make love with Jasmine. He has loved her all his life. Now, they are together, they nearly died together, she’s in his house that he built for her - he’ll be full of passion…”

Oh, I didn’t like where she was going with this. She’ll be telling me how they should be doing it next - positions and descriptions and all!

“And, Jasmine, there he is all gorgeous and hunky and sweaty after saving her. And now she realises she loves him. She’ll want to touch him and kiss him…”

“Stop!”

i didn’t have enough hands to cover my eyes and ears all at once.

“What, darling? It’s just human nature I’m talking about.”

My psyche had to be nursed back to health with lots of smelling salts and have its clammy brow mopped with damp flannels.

AFter I had recovered from the trauma of learning all about wild passionate sex from my mum, I looked at the scene again and I knew she was right. I deleted it all and started again. The scene in the published novel is truer and it works a lot better.

I think when I was writing the first version, I had an awareness in the back of my mind that my mum would be reading the book. And perhaps in some way that inhibited me when it came to the love scene. (I challenge you writers out there to write a passionate sex scene while holding in your head a picture of of your mum!) But, when it came to the reality of my mum, she responded to my writing as herself - a woman as well as a mother - and freed me in my turn to be true to myself in my writing. Viva la passione!