Audience...

Fifth Assignment completed and assessed (in record time) by Nina Milton, my Tutor. Spent a few evenings re-writing with her suggestions in mind and then saved ready for assessment. Now I am working on the essay and the final course commentary, to be finished by the end of February.

So last week I put the final piece of my course plan into action. I created a single document, split into chapters the same as the assignments, without all the paraphernalia of the requirements of the OCA (headers with Assignment identifiers and student number etc). I thought a more normalized view would make my target volunteer feel more comfortable.

Yes! I was about to turn over the first five chapters of FADE to my colleagues eleven year old son. I was fine, in principle - in a detached way. I printed it off, placed a front sheet - blank, of course, so that other colleagues would not see what I was handing over - and waited for her to come in. Being a busy single parent she arrived at her usual time, flustered and in a flurry that only arriving almost late to work after being up for hours trying to organize and entire household can produce. The usual "good mornings" exchanged between work mates and I sat there silent. She noticed. She smiled. I smiled, my tongue cleaved to the top of my mouth and I got up and walked to the coffee point to get a glass of water.

I returned. I waited. The office settled and there was a general "getting on with things" atmosphere. I got up and stood at my colleagues side and slid the 14,000 plus words onto her desk. She stared and then looked up with a grin. I instantly wanted to run and hide.It was then that she dropped the bombshell that not only would her son be reading it but so would her older daughter - "well it's coming into our house" her brilliant justification, which made me smile - and she ("of course") would read it with them.

Now I REALLY wanted to run and hide.

"That's okay isn't it?"

Not really an open question, I thought and a little unfair having been thoroughly ambushed. I shrugged and said "Yeah" as casually as I could. I sat down - panic flooding through every corpuscle and nerve ending.

I drank the glass of water.

This was good. An almost twelve year old (target audience), a fifteen year old and a work colleague of forty would be reading it; "more the merrier", surely? Yes, of course - get on with your work.

What if "he" hates it?
What if it bores him?
What if they all hate it?
This felt like the nerves I had going in for my abdominal surgery five years ago.

I realized that I had not put any questions for him to answer on the blank front page; I asked for the piece back. Reluctantly, it was placed on my desk and I stared at it, suddenly I was unable to think of three perfectly leveled questions that would give me perfect feedback.I picked up my pen and wrote "Comments?"

Then I handed it back.

The following day my colleague rushed in beaming. The usual good mornings and I tried not to look at her, her desk, anything around her; in fact I was accused of staring at my own computer screen and looking furious about something. I was embarrassed and scared.

Then she leaned over, still grinning.

"He's hooked! He had to be forced to stop reading it last night and go to bed. Well, we both stopped at the same place, end of chapter two," she said. She was beaming again, she leaned forward and added "You HAVE to publish it!"

I laughed - quite a bit more loudly than I envisaged - then I replied "I have to finish writing it first."

It's been five days so far. Five days of thinking about them reading it, wondering, wishing and being generally scared to death that I have made a mistake.

I thought this was a good idea. It is. What I hadn't bargained on was the feeling of being exposed. I feel completely at their mercy - an eleven year old, fifteen year old and a forty year old could crush and devastate me.

Am I proud of FADE? Yes, what there is of it. Do I want to finish it? God, yes. Did I think this would be easy. No! But I thought the easy bit would be handing it over (to the target audience) and getting feedback.

Another learning point - scary or not.