Last night I presented a new, much better version of Chapter One to my in-house beta reader. His response frustrated me since I have spent many, many hours working on it and it still turned out, in a word, poor.
Why are the other chapters going so well but the first one, the crucial one, is so bad? So when I was criticizing his feedback, the danger of being married to a writer I'm afraid, I said, so what, should I just throw chapter one away? I said it to provoke him into telling me how much he actually liked chapter one but instead he just turned over and went back to sleep.
So I stewed on it for a while then I went to the computer and cut out the first chapter. Just to read it without it. And you know, I realized it was time to let go of it. It just wasn't going to work. It was a ragged piece of a different puzzle.
So now it is gone.
Today, I am sharing the first part of what was chapter three but is now chapter two. It is okay despite being rather unedited. You are welcome to leave comments on this one. I'll return tomorrow with the second half of the chapter.
Chapter 2: Rough Draft
No comments:
Post a Comment