Man, I am good!

I pick up a chapter, printed up for revisions, and read. The text sparkles, pulls me along, pulls me in. This is what they mean when they say, "Write the book you want to read." Man, I am good!

I pick up the next chapter. Stuffy, stilted language, flaws in logic, plot inconsistencies... I would throw it against the wall, but nobody else would pick up the scattered papers for me. Man, I stink!

Bipolar? Who me? No, why do you ask?

No, Darzian, it's just that the fifth week of September only has two days in it... And I might actually be celebrating on one of them.

Aunty, trust me, it's awful. Why do you think I'm here instead of revising?

Yup, I'll be back at it in a few minutes. But I really had to cleanse my palate before I went back to it. I have to pick the good stuff out of there, and rewrite it in a more palatable form.

Young person. I like that. You are my friend.

I'm working on it, KTC. I did rework that terrible chapter. Actually, it was nowhere near as bad as a few others that needed to be rewritten from the ground up.

I just find it amusing how I can go from delighted shivers to deep disgust. I'm assuming that no one else will get quite so emotional about it. Sort of like having kids.

Susan, I have been finding that kind of question very useful in rewriting. I look at a sentence, paragraph, chapter and ask: what really needs to be here? What's the best way of expressing it? I've axed entire scenes or chapters and found I could tuck the one or two useful bits into a quick off-hand remark somewhere else.