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Monday, June 13, 2005

Sunday Night Obsession

I may have mentioned before that I have a heck of a time sleeping on Sunday nights. Always have. So I spent my sleepless hours last night obsessing about TACV. I know what brought this on, and I do know better. I guess I'm just a slow learner. Anyway, I was worrying about the end of the book.

I always get such opposite responses. I've mentioned this before, that I'll see somewhere online someone saying how much they disliked something I did in one of my books, and that same week, I'd get an email from another reader telling me how much they loved that very thing. If I could only get a consensus, I'd know what to work on. Sigh.

In any case, this opposite response thing extends to professionals too. My agent thought I needed to add a little something to the last part of the book to make it as strong as the start of the story. My editor thought I started off slow, but he liked what I did at the end and wished I could have set more in Orcus. Because of the tight time frame I had on revisions, though, I didn't get much of a chance to work on anything that wasn't in my revision letter. I did rewrite chapter 15, and I'm hoping that helped.

I just wish that I would get a majority opinion on something. If 75% of people who read my work would agree, I swear I'd read some books on how to improve and try to fix my deficiencies, but it just never works that way for me. At my first RWA book signing, I had someone come up and tell me how suspenseful they thought the opening was in RF. Five minutes later, I had someone tell me how ho hum they thought my opening was, but that they were glad they kept reading. I've seen comments that the last half of RF sucked, I've received comments that the last half of RF was the best part of the book. Subjective. And split evenly. So I just keep trying to improve what I think needs work.

And honestly, people wonder why writers are neurotic? Huh? How can we not be?

Anyway, I didn't mean this to be my sole topic of conversation today, but I'm tired and it tends to be easier for me to worry like this when I'm sleepy.

MN Weather Report: 69 degrees.