Why did I just let DH read over my revised opening? It's not like this is actually his kind of book, but his verdict, "It's fine, but your heroine sounds awful immature," has me doubting pretty much everything.

Ignore your DH. I have not found your heroine to be immature at all.

Susan, take the ms away from Dylan and smile and pat his hand and then stop it.

For one thing, she is immature, in the sense that she's cloistered and young. From what I'm reading? She's fine.

edit: fine as in, right reactions for her conditions and age.

Whew. Though I'm wondering if I made a mistake by moving the bit where she acts all giddy over her cousin's homecoming to the first page, because that is her immature point, her schoolgirl crush on him--it's supposed to be. She'd be entirely too much of a freak if she were eighteen years old and only mature and responsible, and she needs a blind spot to overcome. But maybe I shouldn't lead with that if I want people to take her seriously as a romance heroine. Argh! Editing harder than writing book in the first place!

She'd be entirely too much of a freak if she were eighteen years old and only mature and responsible, and she needs a blind spot to overcome.

Especially considering the time the story takes place and her upbringing. Do you no longer open the story in the library?

It still opens in the library, but now it starts right at the moment Julius enters and Lucy gets all giddy over him.

It's fine, but your heroine sounds awful immature

Susan, even though I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about, since I haven't read the novel (I'd like to add 'yet' to that sentence, please), from what you posted here it seemed to me like Lucy not being mature at the beginning of the story was part of the point - that she grew up throughout it, that, again, this is a sentence that has a 'yet' in it.

In any way, when I read, I much prefer a character who is less 'oh, so mature, even though she's so young' and more in a reasonable place for her age when it comes to this question, if I'm making myself remotely clear.

Argh! Editing harder than writing book in the first place!

You finished a novel. You can do this.

Argh! Editing harder than writing book in the first place!

It is if you're doing it right! Chip Delaney says that editing a page usually takes him three to four times longer than it did to write it. He 'budgets' an hour a page.

Not that every writer should work the same way... but for somebody like me who writes middling first draft prose it's a blessing that it can be whipped into shape on subsequent passes....

BTW, I love the Shakespearean take on the family: Julius, Portia, Cordelia.

Everybody's a critic...I got notes from a carpet layer once. I wanted to say "Do I tell you how to lay carpet? No? Get a clue." But I realize a. I'm not just a Bitch but a bitch. b. You actually love your husband and care if he talks to you.

BTW, I love the Shakespearean take on the family: Julius, Portia, Cordelia.

I named Cordelia first as a Buffy shout-out, and then decided that their father loved his Shakespeare and decided to make the rest fit the pattern.