You know, I spent a really long time wrestling with this novel, seriously struggling. The plot made no sense, I was fighting it for years. I had long, frustrated conversations with Kevin in bed late at night, trying to work through the plot problems. I finally finished a (3rd?) draft and gave it to my agent, hoping I was wrong and it was actually good, and he sent me back pages on why it was broken and he was right.
And then somehow, in the last draft (#4?) I stripped away all the nonsense and found a decent core to build on, that actually made sense.
And now with this draft, I’m FINALLY going in knowing exactly what the book is about, and who all the characters are, and why they act the way they do, and what I’m trying to do with the novel, and oh my god.
THIS is what it feels like when I write short stories, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this about a novel before. I think I’ve never gotten to this stage of revising a novel before — I always gave up on books before I got here, worn out by broken drafts. I’ve been trying to write novels for 15 YEARS, people.
Where I am now feels like a tiny miracle, and I almost want to delete this post because I’m afraid of jinxing it.
But in the interest of documenting the process (teachers gotta teach), I’m going to let it stand.