Hey guys! First thing’s first: there was a clear winner in the “pick my author photo for me decisions are hard” election. You guys loved photo #3, and so that was what I sent on to my lovely editor! This will be my face, FOR THE AGES.

Second of all, I know I’ve been quiet lately. That’s because I’ve been doing that mysterious writer thing called revising. A few weeks ago, right after I got my big ol’ edit letter (alongside a marked-up manuscript which bore a veritable and literal rainbow of sticky notes), a friend asked me if I was planning to blog the editing process. But he wondered if doing so might be problematic. After all, you don’t want to reveal conflicts between author and editor.

Funny thing, though. It’s not that I haven’t been blogging because I disagree with my editor. Quite the opposite, actually–and more on that in a moment. I actually haven’t blogged because I’ve been really busy. Working till three or four in the morning busy. Scratching my head and moving stuff around in scrivener and pushing myself harder than I’ve ever been pushed before busy.

In my off-time (that is, when I’m in the bath), I’ve been reading a biography of JD Salinger. The contrast between ol’ Jerry’s editing process and my own is striking. He finished The Catcher in the Rye and then immediately boxed it up to his agent. He got annoyed when an editor asked him if Holden was “crazy.” He freaked out  over a lot of stuff, it seems. Didn’t want his editor messing with his vision. And while it’s difficult to argue with his end result–The Catcher in the Rye is pretty perfect in both conception and execution, no?–I can’t help but feel like my own moments worrying about my own “vision” and whether someone (an agent, an editor, a critique partner) might ruin it were mostly moments wasted.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying a writer should accept every editorial change unthinkingly. I have strong instincts about my work and what does and doesn’t fly. In our short business relationship, my editor has already reminded me that I should feel free to shoot down her ideas. It’s a nice reminder that my book is ultimately my book.

But I do think that even inapplicable feedback is helpful feedback. Even if a suggestion or criticism doesn’t jive with my vision of my work, it’s helpful to know how a reader who is very different from me approaches that work. Reader response is always valid, and interesting. The ability to synthesize a whole bunch of reader feedback into glittering generalities about what readers want has been key to my growth as a writer.

But I also count myself lucky to be surrounded by people–friends and critique partners, my lovely agent, my lovely editor–who are a whole lot smarter than I am. About the business. About books. I trust their instincts, and their faith in the raw material of my novel. I know that they want Starglass to be the best book it can possibly be.

Because look: Starglass has changed a lot since I first started drafting it. Back in 2010, it was a fairly quiet story about a girl whose mom had died called Daughter of Earth. I needed more conflict, so I though, “Okay, I’ll throw in a rebellion. Or something.” While Terra will always be, at her core, a girl whose mom had died, that secondary conflict–that rebellion–has grown in importance mightily. Minor characters have been fleshed out to become whole people. The world–once a stock SF setting–has been enriched. There are now themes and a hearty dose of epicness.

I never imagined myself writing an epic novel. The writer I was in 2010 probably could not have executed the task. But because I was open to suggestions from people who are smarter than I am, this book has grown so, so far past its original conception. And it’s much better than it once was. A better book.

And fundamentally different. If you’re a writer, you might know the feeling of having an entire universe in your head. Your mind contains characters, stories, which sometimes feel like they’re floating around independent of you and your body and your life. The first version of Starglass was one of these stories. Subsequent revisions–and there have been many–weren’t so much a readjustment of the original vision but a fresh new version. It’s like a “many worlds” theory of books. Revision has not just been a refinement of that original but rather a guided tour through many possibilities. The end result, I hope, will be to find the ideal version–not only the best of all possible worlds, but the best of all possible books.

In case you were wondering, I’m still hard at work on revisions for agent Michelle. At some point, hopefully soon, I won’t be–though I won’t say anything when that happens and we go on sub. Mum’s the word, and all that. But for now, she’s still helping me nudge my book into shape.

When we had our first phone call, she asked if I thought I was done revising. I think that every author hopes–on every draft!–that this version is the final version. And Daughter of Earth had been revised more than any book I’d written previously. The changes came about in a large part because of my now-defunct critique group, but more importantly, my change in attitude toward revision came through my online friendship with fellow YA sci-fi writer Sean Wills. Sean had an unspeakably good attitude toward feedback. He seemed to take it all in easy-going stride. I asked him about it one day, and he told me how he thought praise was useless. He wanted to write great stories, right? Only accepting criticism  in good stride would help him do that–not reacting defensively or in a proprietary way about his words. After our conversation, I began to shift my ego away from me, and my vision, to the book that was in front of me. No matter what happened with my career, I wanted my stories to be strong. I wanted them to stand up to critics who are just as tough as I am, if not tougher. And you can’t really do that alone, or in one fell swoop. You need time, and you need help.

So Michelle and I started revising.

I won’t deny that I’m impatient, or that I whine to my husband about how, ugh, revision hurts! I find it far more difficult and far more boring than writing. Writing I can handle–spewing out rivers of words. Revising is more delicate, more painstaking–but I’m starting to think it’s more important, too.

It’s been fascinating to see how my book has changed. Or . . . not changed really; that’s not quite the right word. But first my critique group, and now Michelle, have been able to see the latent promise in those earlier drafts. They’ve teased out meaning and nuance and plot twists based on little more than innuendo and gaps in my own flawed thinking. Daughter of Earth started simply, a long time ago. It had its genesis in a short story I wrote back in graduate school for a class on James Joyce. It was a pastiche of “Eveline” set on a generation ship (which will be published in March of 2012 in Aoife’s Kiss–makes me feel better about the B it netted in class!). The very skeleton of the story was there: abusive father, absent siblings, dead mother, ship in orbit, a closed society, a choice to be made. All of these things were present in my very first draft–Terra, on a spaceship then called the Maya, grieves the loss of her mother and then must decide if she’ll join up in a shipboard rebellion. But each subsequent revision has cast these plot elements into doubt, or given them nuance, depth. The story is now one of Judaism in deep-space diaspora; there are several twists. It’s more epic than I ever dreamed of, really. But the raw material for this story was there even way back in 2008, before I’d ever considered turning it into a book.

And I love it–I really love it. I have more affection for Terra than any protagonist I’ve ever written, and more of a sense of the Asherah than any setting I’ve ever visited before. Sometimes I feel like the books I was writing before were rushed, more vehicles for a career than passions. This book–this is a passion.

And damn it, I want to do it right.

Still editing, as you can see–typing my comments in at this point. Apparently I didn’t much like this paragraph. I started to copyedit it, then circled it and wrote “UGH” over the text.

Indeed!

Review of Starcrossed at some point this weekend is coming, lovelies. Just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten you.

Just a little teaser from the last quarter of my book. In revision, I’ve been going through and adding a lot of scenes to the second half, trying to slow down the sloppiness break-neck speed. I like these new scenes–they feel luxurious. In drafting this part of the book, I felt like I was on this long slide toward the inevitable end, and so I didn’t take the time I really needed to examine my main character’s mental state. Here, Terra’s voice shines nicely.

Silvan knew my body, but he didn’t know my true self, not really. If he had really known me, then he would have known how I was transforming, turning to stone, hardening against him. But he didn’t. He just kept pressing kisses against my collarbone and drawing his soft hands over me. He took my laughter and my goose bumps to mean something deep and true. But the only emotion running beneath my raw, ravaged skin was a murky concoction of guilt and anger. The guilt was for using him this way, for selfishly taking advantage of his body’s small pleasures. The anger was for what he was doing on behalf of the Council.

Despite his cock-eyed smile, no matter how warm and pressing his fingers, he’d reaped the harvest of my mother’s death: power, and plenty of it. Silvan was complicit. And he would pay.

Sometimes I’d gaze deep into his black eyes, find myself reflected back in them, and think, You are so stupid. You have no idea. I know that’s not fair. I’d always kept secrets from him, after all, not only the assassination, but the wine-dark dreams that still came to me every night. When he kissed me, I closed my eyes and imagined smoother lips, thought of a lithe, long body pressed against mine, and not his. I thought of snow, and the wild perfume of summer flowers that came even in the white-swirled night. I was always naming them in my head, even as I stood by Silvan’s side in the archives. I faked a shit-eating grin when the woman read out our bloodlines. But the only thing I heard was Magnolia Virginia, Syringia Vulgaris, and of course the names of a thousand roses.

To be fair, I was never really with Silvan, even when I stood right next to him.

So I should forgive him for believing me when, one night, as he tangled his big fingers through my hair, cupping the crown of my head in his palm, and said to me, “My parents want you to come to supper tomorrow night. Captain Wolff will be there,” I gave a sweet smile and said, “Of course. I’d love to.”

Even as the bile rose in my throat.