I’m blessed with some very good first readers. They’re all great writers and editors, and their responses helped me get out of my own head and tell a better story. I’m also blessed with a partner who is not a writer, and as I learned this week, that opinion is worth a manuscript’s weight in gold.
Every writer needs someone to treat the characters like people, and express dismay when they do things that pull their story off track. Every writer needs to know when the novel stops working, even if the reader can’t explain why. Sitting at the breakfast table yesterday, talking over sticky plates, a few leftover pumpkin pancakes and coffee, I learned that when all other revision efforts have failed, the best critiques sometimes look like a shrug, sound like an, “I didn’t get it, sorry,” and are offered with love.
So, now having more or less figured out what an agent was saying when she said the novel comes apart at the end, I am revising it one more time and will resubmit it in December, and send it to other agents if I can. I also have to clean up the synopsis of the next novel, so that while THE IDIOT’S TALE is on submission, I can make progress with something else. But first we have to eat sweet potato casserole and pie. Happy Thanksgiving.
