REVISIONS.

So the current young adult book has probably been revised fully 10 times, partially a couple dozen more. I got it to a point where I wasn't happy with it--when is anyone ever happy with it?--but where I knew that I no longer knew what to do with it.

This is when you're supposed to query, right?

Long, boring, recognizable-to-all-authors story short, I was ready to leave it on the back burner, at least for a little while, because I couldn't fix it alone.

Then I really and truly lucked out. I got COPIOUS notes on the manuscript from an agent, the kind of notes that make yet another revision feel worth it, since I have someone confirming my instincts about where it's going off the rails, and I was able to move it onto the front of the stove again (has anyone ever tried to extend this metaphor beyond the back burner before? It's a little awkward...).

Which brings me to:

REVISIONS ARE THE HARDEST THING EVER.


I agree with basically every note I've been given, and many of them set off a cascade of "oh, this is how to do that" moments, but there's still an overwhelming sense of holy-shit to the whole process. My friend nailed it yesterday: "it's like cutting a hole in something you've knit and then trying to fix it without unraveling the whole thing. Usually you just have to tear out the whole thing and start from scratch."

No one will notice that, right? 

Except you can't start from scratch, really, because the entire reason you're getting these revision notes is because there's something--maybe a lot--about the original that is worth saving, and besides, if you tore everything out, you'd realize, only once you'd reached the end of the new, "better" pattern, that you made tons of other mistakes this time around, mistakes you don't know how to begin to fix.

Ugh.

This is why any time someone says they just "love" writing, that it's FUN, that it's one of their favorite things to do, gosh-it's-so-fulfilling, I assume they're probably not very good.

Because Donna Tartt's Goldfinch has taught us all that even the GREATS need to go back in and revise.

And this part is emphatically no fun at all.

Except for those moments when you realize THIS! THIS IS HOW IT WILL WORK! And you see a glimmer of the book you wanted to write all along...

...then you have to execute on them, and you're back to tearing out the pattern.