...And I Did NOT Get Wrapped Around a Pole

All I can think of to say right now is...I DID IT!!!!


Yes, I just sent in my first entry to my first writing contest. I stopped dusting the studio and rewrote Chapter One. I grit my teeth like nobody's business and made changes I didn't want to make, and after all I'm very pleased. Fancy that.


This rewriting thing has got me thinking. Revising a manuscript over and over is like whipping up alternate galaxies.


I threw together the first three pages of Chapter One two years ago simply so I could submit my thin skin to a thick-skinned manuscript clinic run by Jerry B. Jenkins at my first Christian Writers Guild conference. Turns out he liked it (not that he didn't rip it apart, but he liked it while he ripped it apart). I was stunned and gratified. And, by this time, stubbornly attached to the part he liked.


But of course, getting precious about any creative work is death for creativity. As soon as something becomes absolutely essential, that's the time to throw it away.


Over the next two years, Chapter One went through both drastic overhauls and minute tweaks. Yet every time I overhauled or tweaked, I did so around the part I was hanging on to, which didn't help the situation. Anyone who's revised a text knows that changes in one sentence mean changes in another. It's like boxing clouds. Blink your eyes and you've got a whole new chapter. Except for the parts you refuse to change.


Then I joined a crit group. Oh dear. They were kind, but it was a structural issue, you see.


Resistant to the end, I dug in my heels. I tried every which way to keep that part. It was my opening hook. Jerry loved it! Maybe it could be a prologue...except it happened in the past. Maybe it could be not exactly a prologue but not exactly part of the chapter, either...Well, even I could see how far that would fly.


So yesterday I took a hatchet to it and started Chapter One in a whole new place. Know where? In the place I'd started the very first draft almost three years ago. Now it's a whole new old chapter, and much better besides.


How many incarnations did Chapter One go through to get to where it is? And how many more lie ahead? If I lined all the versions up like cousins with a family resemblance, they'd reach around the globe. And there are twelve chapters to go.


What am I doing with that precious severed limb? I'm hanging on to it. It'll make a perfect blurb for the back of the book.


Tomorrow I'm dressing up as a clown witch and letting my split personality slug it out. But tonight, I'll sleep the sleep of the just. The just entered, that is.


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!