Bring it on

Nope, I’m not going to bust out with cheerleading moves, like the movie titled after this blog post. That would be pretty scary. Of course, with my life lately, I seem to be cheering for bodily noises from my three-month old son, rather than sports teams. “Come on! You can burp! Don’t let that gas bubble own you!” (as I proceed to smack the stew out of my boy) Then, too, there are the gas moments when I bicycle his little legs and encourage him to work throuuuuugh the pain or bounce him on my shoulder. You get the idea.

But today, revisions arrived on my book. This was the book where I wrote the last third in a desperate surge to get it done before baby. And I read it after baby was born. And said: Dear God, what was I thinking?

I rewrote the last third, during maternity leave. I think I should have known this was NOT a good idea, given that my average sleeping time was 4 hours or fewer per day. Even so, I wrote my way through the mess, hoping to see the light. I cut and pasted, rewrote and sweated my way through it. I turned it in on time, too.

Still not done. I think I’ve always known in the back of my head that those 118 pages couldn’t be saved. Even when I rewrote them, fleshed them out with more emotions, and tried to bring them alive…they strayed from the main romance of the book. I can see now that I didn’t write all of the scenes I needed to in the first third. The emotional pacing was off, and I need to spend more time developing my hero’s path from wanting to die, to wanting to live.

The bad news is, I’m probably going to hack out one third of this book.

The good news is, this is going to be one amazing book when I’m done with it. I bit off a little more than I could chew, trying to make a love triangle where all three characters were sympathetic. And I still believe I can do this. I think that the book will be more powerful and ultimately the best book I’ve written. Growing pains hurt, but they make you a stronger writer. I’m up for the challenge, and I’m not afraid to wander into this jungle with a machete.

Great books aren’t written. They’re re-written. Somehow in the midst of all this, I have to find the heart of the story and bring it to life. I’m not sure how long it will take, and I’ll probably have to bury myself under for a while. But I’ll get there.

Wish me luck!