Time for Rewrites

My daughter read the first ten chapters of the draft for The Body in the Kitchen. Only had a few comments, which worries me more than when she sends a list of things to fix. Makes me wonder if my book was really clean or just didn’t make her passionate enough to give me grief about anything. Sigh. If I get a long list of fixes, I worry. If I don’t get enough, I worry. Part of being a writer. 

Anyway, her comments motivated me to pull up the draft and start going through it again. So far, I’m pretty happy with it. But even after letting it sit for a while, it’s still hard for me to judge my own work. All I can do is to try to make it better. I worked at trying to create a good balance between Jazzi and Ansel’s personal life and solving the mystery, and I hope I’ve done that, but that’s always tricky for me to judge, too. M.L. Rigdon/Julia Donner (my friend and critique partner) said she’s almost through with the whole manuscript, and then I’ll know for sure. We both wield ruthless red pens when we go through each other’s work. Truth be told, I scribble more “loved this” in her margins than anything else. I love her writing. And I think it’s just as important to tell writers what WORKED as to let them know what didn’t.

For today, I’ll just do my best. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, replaying a scene I wasn’t sure about, so I know my mind’s sorting through story lines. That’s a good sign.

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