Wednesday Writes: THINKING and DOUBTING

Ever get notes back from a CP, or maybe even your agent or editor, and think HOW DO I FIX THIS? They tell you what's not working, which is GREAT because that's exactly what you want. But then you wrack your brain trying to figure out how to make it work.

That was me last week. I knew my MS needed work. (They always do.) And all my CP's comments made perfect sense. But for a couple of days I was completely blank on how to fix the problems. Said blankness led to frustration, then despair, a lot of in-my-head sobbing, denial, the feeling of being the worst writer in the world... and then once I got through all that, it was: okay Melanie. THINK. And I did. I ran questions through my mind, I looked at different angles, I went back to the basics and figured out what each of my characters wanted and then tried to figure out what they would DO to get it.

Seems obvious, but this is pretty much the process I go through every time I get critique back. I finally got started on the actual revisions, and I have a vision of how to fix the problem, which is good. The bad thing is there's still that niggling voice of doubt in the back of my mind that's saying: maybe this isn't helping at all. Maybe you're not really doing anything. Or maybe you're fixing one problem only to be causing another.

Isn't being a writer GRAND?