Over on social media, I have been meditating about beginnings—about how they circle around and recur. With a novel, you have as many beginnings as you have drafts. And if there’s been rough feedback or misalignment between the writer and the editors, beginning the next draft can be fraught with resistance and worry.

I’m happy that I got to take a nice long break from the manuscript grind. In the interim, I’ve been working on the anthology I’m co-editing. And with rewrites rolling in, I have more work to do in that area. I was, frankly, not okay with my level of alignment with my editors and I needed all the time that I had to get ready to begin working on the YA book again.

But I made it to the other side. After an authentic conversation with my editor and a new approach to how she was delivering feedback, I’m ready to begin again! This week, I wrote my schedule and edited two chapters. It feels great to move things forward. I was on a panel for a  series of events for my alma mater, and someone asked how do you keep writing when you’re exhausted with the manuscript/over the project. That’s not where I am with this novel, but I do have a novel that I’ve definitely exhausted myself on. My answer was that you have to find something new to focus on. For the novel that I was exhausted with, I added a new element to the narrative, so that as I went through the novel editing it, I had something new to play with.

For the YA novel, my breakdown with the editors was they felt I had made too far of a leap in draft 2 and wanted to go back to draft 1. And I felt I had made too far of a leap in draft 2 to go back to draft 1. Our compromise is a frankendraft, which is what I’m working on editing now. Usually in draft 2, I allow myself to be free as I take the story to the next level. In this third draft, the new challenge I have set for myself is improve the story that’s on the page. So as I’m making craft decisions, I’m working on improving the flow of words without changing the story. It’s been an interesting discipline to really pay attention to what I’m doing. Am I just changing the words or am I really improving things. Where I am improving things, am I changing the narrative, am I departing from what was already built?

These questions are intriguing to me and it gives me a meaty challenge as I edit a draft the editors are begging me not to change too much as I strengthen the narrative.

Sending you all good mojo as you work to break the seal on your own projects—or as you work to keep moving forward with one you’ve been wrestling with for a long time.

Onward!