The Days of My Life

"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish." - Thomas Wolfe

Ah, the joys of editing.

And oh! The true joy of a second (or third) pair of eyes.

D sent me back her crits on the first twenty-five pages of my mystery. And she made one very specific and quite valid observation about my heroine's (bad) attitude. I reviewed it a couple of times with her notes, and feel like the blinders were removed. She's right. Laurie's attitude makes her a little unlikeable. Thankfully, it's not a hard fix. And, thankfully, her attitude doesn't continue throughout, so it's not something I'm going to have to edit for the 25,000 words I have completed.

Thanks, D!

Yesterday, I worked on a synopsis for my Camilla story yesterday because, of all the novels I've written, I think hers would be the easiest to sell. Of course, there's that pesky last third I need to write -- I have the ending, I have 43,000 words of the beginning, but there are some scenes I just can't get down on paper.

My attention feels a little fractured right now. I have a lot of different projects on my plate, and usually I like it that way, but for some reason lately I've had difficulty working on any of them. I suppose I should only do one thing at a time, but multi-tasking is built into my genetic structure. Really.

In any case, I expect this to be a very busy year. It's good.