If you saw my last post about my disappointment in the critiques I received from an editor and a literary agent on the first fifteen pages of my novel a couple weeks ago, you know I 
was ready to quit writing. Obviously, that wouldn’t have been the Bad Ass thing to do, so I decided to give myself a break from my novel for a couple weeks.
I recently read their comments again, and it’s amazing how differently I can see things with a little time buffer. Okay, so I’m not ecstatic that they didn’t love my pages and ask for the full manuscript, but they did give me some helpful suggestions, sure to strengthen the opening of TWO FEET, NO SHOES. Further, they clarified what 
wasn’t working in my synopsis with their feedback as to where they saw problems in story structure. Truthfully, the structure is solid, thanks to Larry Brooks and his book: Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies. Writing a synopsis, on the other hand, is a skill in itself, and I haven’t totally gotten that down yet.
I’ve started revising, and now I can see how the things that were missing (that I didn’t realize were missing) needed to be there. It amazes me how I can see other writers’ work so clearly, yet my own can be so elusive.
Now I’m back in the saddle (more like my favorite chair at the formal dining room table), pounding the keys on my laptop, and lining up new readers to help me figure out when I’ve nailed it.
If anyone else out there has had a setback and is coming out of a slump, or you’ve made it through whatever difficulties you ran into, I’d love to hear about it. It can’t just be me who has experienced things like this, right?
