Imminent book demise averted!

You may have noticed, it’s been over a week since I last wrote a real post—and if you didn’t notice, please don’t tell me. I’d like to keep the illusion that you’re all hanging on my every word. Anyway, I’ve been busy editing and revising An Illusion of Trust.  The editing was no problem. Then along came revisions.

Actually, part of those went well too. I added two short scenes and made minor revisions to another. But the biggie stumped me. So I took a break and read—a whole book. I still couldn’t think how to revise. So I looked at a few thousand stock images for the cover. Still nothing.  So I printed out my scene synopsis and marked the four problematic ones because seeing something in print often wakes my Muse.

This time she only opened one eye and mumbled a few words. So I did the logical thing. I decided not to revise those scenes. I’m just kidding, of course. I decided to toss the whole book.

Over-reaction? Maybe, but I was frustrated. However … I took one last stab at the four scenes. I decide there were good reasons not to change one of them, but I made notes on ways to subtly revise the other three. I knew that wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t fix the problem my alpha reader cited. So I started an email to tell her I wasn’t a good enough writer to salvage the book. But then I decided, before I gave up, I’d show her the only changes I came up with. And …

She said, “You need to take ‘I’m ready to just walk away from this book’ out of your vocabulary forever.” She also said the revisions I’d suggested were “perfect”. So … yeah. I’ve made those revisions and now I’m doing another read-through before I send it off to beta readers.

Want to hear something funny? Over-reaction was the issue she wanted me to fix. Now can you imagine me having a character do that? 😉