Sierra is great, but I wanted her to be more capable, figure things out more.
I felt like a lot of stuff was just kind of given to her but she really seems like a more capable character than that.
I think Albion is a great foil for the life Sierra is heading towards (kinda showing the quieter life Sierra could have had/would have wanted).
It continues to blow my mind that my readers can make statements like the above about the people who only exist in my head. (Sidenote: NOW THEY ARE IN YOUR HEADS TOO.)
I took a premature plunge into rewriting and, after this weekend's sprint, am now 15,900 words into Draft 3. Even though I think it would've been ideal for sanity reasons to have my entire story plotted/outlined down to a tee, I find plotting enormously boring. Backstory? I know it's important, but yawn. Give me the here and now!
With rewriting came banging my head against the wall a lot. Writing is excruciating! Every word is an item of creative output. The only way to make it less excruciating is to steamroll over your inner editor and keep outputting (thank you, NaNoWriMo!). I believe this is true because I'm still banging my head against the wall, but less frequently.
What keeps me going: I'm hopping with excitement about the changes to the first quarter of the book. Though for many of them I'm starting from scratch, I think they'll make for a strong, consolidated response to feedback like the above. Sierra now has to work damn hard to be Coronated; she gets to spend much more time at the Hogwarts-like Collegium; and she leverages the Collegium's arcane resources to investigate her peculiar problem. She must also navigate slanderous claims about her history from a familiar red-haired face, and Albion's support, while welcome, could at any time set off the same trap that ensnared her old schoolmate. Little does anyone know that the final exam Sierra's preparing for is going to bring her whole world crashing down. Brrrr!
What do you want to hear about in the next missive? Let me know by hitting reply.
Yours,
Amy