Surprise, Surprise.

I had another real gut check moment this week. Two, actually. I got into my revisions and suddenly realized I have to rewrite almost every bit of Tommy and Cindi’s storyline. The first story is fine–now. I have to totally rewrite the second for it to be from Tommy’s point of view, then that means that every other story in that arc has to be rewritten, too.

So I resigned myself to doing that. Scared I would mess it up by doing it, so popped out all five stories into their own document to revise on in case it’s too hard and I have to give it up.

Then Saturday I realized that once that one is beefed up the way I want it to be, that James and Lori’s story arc was terribly weak compared to the others. I needed more juice for it too. I started fussing to my writing friends. It was so demoralizing for about a day to think that just when I thought I was done, that those characters were crying for more development as well. But since I had already decided on one set of revisions, it seemed deciding on another set wasn’t as hard.

But oh, I fussed about it to my writing friend for this project. She listened so patiently over Facebook Messenger as I went “Augh!” over and over talking about how I knew it all needed to be done. She first advised me to not do it at all if it was going to drive me this crazy. Send it out as it was and see what happened.

I realized I’d rather not send it out at all than do that.

And then I thought of a book that just got published recently. By someone I knew. Who isn’t even a writer by profession–he was an accounting professor at my alma mater. By a press that had rejected Hurricane Baby when I first was sending it out.

So. I thought “Boy howdy, if he can get a book published in this environment, SO CAN I.”

So I am making the changes. Started last night during a rain delay of the football game I had been planning to watch. And I went in hot on it and am now on my way. I am going to succeed with Hurricane Baby as far as it remains in my power. I’m going to write something I am proud of, even if it never gets published. And I’m enjoying ever second.