But what I’m most excited about is a rewrite of book one. I’ve been querying it, getting nibbles, getting positive comments from agents, but with vague reasons (or no reason at all) for why they aren’t taking it. Then I had the good fortune to meet an editor, via Twitter, and to win a contest on her blog which resulted in an edit of my first chapter.
Suddenly, everything is as clear as the sky outside my writing closet this morning. She interpreted the “agent-speak;” she showed me exactly where my story falls and where it rises, and how to fix the spots where I might lose readers.
The good news: it’s never been about my “writing” (i.e. how I put a sentence together). Agents have confirmed this. They’ve always loved the “voice” and the “style” and the “theme.” But then they trail off into murkiness about momentum, or worse, the economy…
Thanks to fairy godmother-editor, Diane, I now see it’s all about pacing. Can I fix this? Yes. Will it be hard? Sure, but no harder than anything else I’ve done with the book, and perhaps a bit easier. The truth is, I can’t stop trying to make this book better (I’ve tried to put it in the proverbial drawer). It’s an important book. It deserves to be read, by people beyond my own home.
My next task is to make a big old chapter-by-chapter timeline, then give it a little shake and let the scenes fall into a more pleasing order, then fill in the blanks with new scenes where needed. No big deal, right? I should have done this a long time ago, but at least I’m doing it. Onward and upward.