I am in the midst of the second edit of the next Nightingale book. For me this is emotional because I didn’t realize how much work was left to be done on this book. So many times I am in the book (literally) and moving with the character when my editor says “You’ve left me hanging in town—how did we get to Broken Rock?” In other words, the reader has no idea how the hero got to Broken Rock because I didn’t tell the reader. I correct it.
I’m disappointed in myself and in my book. Is this going to be worth reading? Is this going to make sense? Will a reader enjoy this book? Will these characters be memorable?
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I want this book to be better than the first one. I guess every writer wishes to keep improving. I keep trying for the magic.
“A writer who hates the actual writing, who gets no joy out of the creation of magic by words, to me is simply not a writer at all… How can you hate the magic which make a paragraph or sentence or a line of dialogue or a description something in the nature of a new creation?” -Letter to Hamish Hamilton, September 19, 1951 by Raymond Chandler