Careful

This is a great article.

This very thing happened to me just last night when my teenage son asked about the book I wrote and abandoned about three years ago because I realized I wasn’t talented enough to do the story justice.

Listening to him fanboy all over the story, and point out how he thought it was better than the NYT bestseller he just finished (I don’t know about all that) – but anyway, it really got me thinking about that story again, and wondering if I’d learned enough about writing to re-envision that epic tale.

I’m trying NOT to think about it until I get my current WIP done, but the story is very much on my mind again.

Views from a Window Seat

After years of writing without seeing a book land on shelves, I’m happy to have a new book in the world and two others on their way. But I still have work in earlier stages of progress to tend to. I love the generosity of early drafts, how they offer a place where mistakes are welcome. And I like the word-fixing of final drafts, the excitement of seeing a story head to new readers. I recently sent a book to a copy editor after some dwelling on whether it was okay to write “Ho, gluepots,” instead of “Ho, glue pots.” And making sure that the ten children in a family stuck to their proper ages during the narrative’s course of years. But those drafts in between that are good enough to show someone else, but still mistake-ridden? Well. I was just reminded of how fragile those can be.

Last month…

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