Moon, Stars and Beyond   A Chronicle of Fact, Fiction and Fantasy

Man, I’ve had it.

Been a tough few weeks since I posted. And again, nothing horrible happened. Just me trying to reach the finish line.

After my, oh, sixth rewrite of my book, I finished it! I’m gasping and panting, sort of looking back at the experience, gazing upon it with bleary eyes, hoping I got it right this time.

Perhaps one of the most exciting, excruciating and frustrating things about putting a work of your own creation together is taking that rough assemblage of unruly words and whipping them into a recognizable form. I put off all forms of recreation and relaxation in order to finish, once and for all, this wonderful story I’ve drummed up in my head. My agent liked it very much, but said it needed work on the dialogue. My sister, the published author, liked the story but told me I gave out too many details when it wasn’t necessary.

Not wanting to rush through it, I read the whole thing through without doing one single edit. I wanted to absorb it, then take the suggestions of both my agent and sister and see how to fix it. I learned long ago not to take criticism personally. You can’t, not when you’re editing. Sure, it helps to have beta readers, and I did, but in the end your story’s going to have to win over the hearts of editors and publishers. There’s no room for taking criticism personally. I couldn’t.

Sure, my sister and I argued over plot points and she tossed my pages back at me when I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to tell me. You might say I have a different way of interpreting her lessons. But she didn’t write the book, I did, and if she can’t figure out what I’m saying, then how will the reader? And yes, once I read out loud my dialogue, my agent was right on the money – people don’t talk like that! Too stodgy, too boring, too…ugh…

So I fixed it all, wrote, rewrote and rewrote some more, even entire pages, until my eyes went numb. Fingers, too. And even after I rewrite the thing for the fifth time, I still wasn’t happy. I gave the whole kit-and-kaboodle one more look-over. Found those last few troublesome spots, as well as some missing commas, periods and other missing punctuation points.

And, for now, I’m done.

Boy, I showed those words a thing or two. So now, I’ll be making regular entries again. I missed my blog. A lot. But I’m doing a lot better now, having whipped my book into the best shape it’s ever been.