Slow and Painful

I'm still working through Story by Robert McKee and still finding it helpful.

I've spent a lot of time noodling on the issues of my story, knowing that it didn't have the necessary dramatic drive, considering what that meant and where repair might come from.

This stage has been far too slow-going. I've felt at times both dispirited and incompetent.

Finally, I've come up with an entirely new opening chapter that I think will help set the tone for a stronger main character and a better-driven story. In order to make the change pay, I've also got to perform surgery on a handful of scenes scattered throughout the novel.

As much as I wanted my first serious draft to work at all the fundamentals, I'm thrilled to have found problems and to be--however painfully--solving them before I put the book in the hands of an agent.

My main goal, when I set out to write this book, was to get to the point that I was truly proud of the work before I inflicted it on anyone in the publishing world.

When I'm finally finished with this draft, if it too turns out to be less than I'd hoped for, I'll be back to work, continuing this cycle until I'm truly happy with the novel.

I'm anxious, still, to get to work on a query letter. But for now it has to wait.