In Our Last Episode

In the last installment, the mad romance writer was nervously waiting to see how the dreaded revision process would go. I'm in the middle of them right now and it's always interesting to hear what other people take away from your work. In this case,my editor. I know what I have in my head, and most times what is up there is what gets down on the paper, but sometimes a reader will read things in my stuff that I didn't even know was there. And I'm thinking, "Wow. I am SO smart." I don't know if I'm really that smart and subconsiously was working some angle, or if the reader is smarter than I am and sees an opportunity for something that I missed. Either way it's fascinating for me to see how people interpret my characters and stories.

I know some author's write very clean drafts, and about half of the time that's me. But I'm a slogging into the mist sort of writer, so usually I don't know what I'm going to do until the story is done, which leads to a lot of loose ends, etc. Anyway, I'm not a purist that believes that my work cannot be improved on. I'm firmly in the camp that anything can be made better. The trick is to know when the law of diminishing returns kicks in and it's time to stop.

And by the way, there's a new issue of Koffee Klatch online. This time, me and Julie Kenner read The Bad Beginnings.
Check it out