Thank Goodness for Criticism

About 12 years ago I began writing my novel Cry of the Sea. I wrote it very quickly, and I thought it was pretty cool. No one wanted to read it, though. So, I took it to the SCBWI-Midsouth conference about five years ago and had an editor-critique session about the first chapter and outline. She was very nice but told me all the problems I had with it, including that the book was way too short. I was pretty broken and pushed the book aside to work on other projects. Then, 3 years ago, SCBWI offered a novel revision workship, hosted by an author I love named Helen Hemphill. I brought my pages and my notebook and got lots of great ideas. Finally, I knew what to do! You want to know what the solution was?

I scrapped the book.  Yep.  Except for the core idea, I pretty much let the rest fall away and started over again.  I'm proud of the outcome, and it definitely got a lot more views by editors when I started submitting.  Fire and Ice Young Adult Novels picked it up last year, and it will be in print and ebook in just a couple weeks!

So, I'm starting a blog about rewriting and revising manuscirpts.  I'm going to start out the next couple weeks by showing you how some of my work has changed drastically from first draft to final draft.  Then I hope to begin inviting other authors to show examples of their rewrites.  I hope you find this fun and educational!