Revisiting and Revising

Before this summer, the manuscript I'm currently working on had been sitting in a drawer for 5 years, as I recently realized. I'd had a particularly devastating critique of it with an editor at the SCBWI Summmer Conference (she didn't like the title, thought the voice wasn't strong enough, didn't know if my subject matter was enough to carry a whole book...), literally threw it into a drawer, and began to work on a different novel. I decided not to sign up for a critique this year, feeling like the novel I was working on for the past 3 years didn't need any further critiques right now, it just needed me to work on it, which I was having trouble doing. So I got out my first novel, almost afraid to look at it as I remembered all the negative comments I received the last time I'd worked on it. Well, guess what?

It wasn't horrible.

Was it ready to start submitting? No, far from it. But when I read parts of it as I flipped through the pages, I saw some things I really liked. A few things made me smile. A couple more made me laugh out loud. And when I signed up for the Working Writer's Retreat a few weeks later, I knew this was the manuscript I wanted to be working on right now. That decision was rewarded by getting great suggestions and some positive feedback from my critique group that weekend. I came home raring to go, feeling like I had a good foundation to work with and now I just needed to do some demolition as well as some rebuilding. I moved what had been Chapter 6 to become the new Chapter 1. That moved the story to a different time of year, causing me to chop a scene I really liked, but I'm trying not to be too attached to anything in the story right now. I put it in a folder and told myself I could use it in a different book. I'm feeling freer and more confident about my writing in general, and with this manuscript in particular, because it's not as bad as I'd thought it was in the mindset of receiving that awful critique.

It's funny, because today I pulled out a CD I hadn't listened to in probably a few years, and as I played it in my car, I realized I'd forgotten how much I liked it and wondered why I didn't play it more often (in my vast music collection, some CDs just get lost in the shuffle sometimes). I knew there was a reason I didn't get rid of it--there must have been something in the back of my mind that vaguely remembered that there was something about it I liked. Kind of like my manuscript...