The hardest part of rewriting a book is letting go of the earlier versions

Back in 2009, I finished the project nicknamed Mistress Novel. I rewrote and revised it until it was as good as I could make it on my own and sent it to Beta readers in April 2011. I made another round of extensive edits based on that feedback and had a “finished” versionI started to query in the summer of 2011. I was pleasantly surprised by how the query process went and things were happening… but then life hit me like a truck in the start of 2012 (which is a funnier metaphor if you’ve read...