Yikes and double yikes!! You know how I told you I was going to have a phone meeting with Sarah Harvey, the teen editor at Orca Books? Well, it turns out Sarah wants some pretty major changes on my Holocaust manuscript. At first, I was a little ... well... taken aback. But by the end of the conversation, I'd come around quite a bit. All night I dreamed of the book, which means my mind is grapplingwith the story. Sarah's major criticism is that she feels I was being too careful with the protagonist -- a Dutch Jewish girl who is closely based on my own mum. She thinks I need to "release my mother from the equation." In my heart, I knew Sarah was right. Her other criticism is that she finds the historical information feels too "inserted." We discussed how a possible solution might be to include a preface that tells readers the background they need to know before they get into the story.
Okay -- all this goes to show something I talk about a lot with my students -- writing is HARD WORK. It's a PROCESS. I know I had to write the manuscript the way I did before I could move on to the next stage. Sarah expects to have detailed notes for me by the beginning of February -- and then I'll have about a month to do the rewrite. Which means I'm going to be working very very hard (I tell my students to avoid the word "very", but I'd say a double very is appropriate here). This experience reminds me of what it feels like to be a student -- we'd all prefer to hear we got things perfectly right first time around, but when we get constructive criticism like I'm getting from Sarah, we need to pick ourselves up and get to work. How's that for a pep talk? (Today, it's more for me than you!!)