I'm always leery of advice that talks about tracking the theme or finding out what the story's about. If you don't know all that before you finish the first draft, I'd be worried. Granted, expressing it all clearly can be tweaked, but I suspect some folks just love to revise.

edit: but fixing typos is always in fashion

I found that advice kind of...masturbatory. But it could be I don't pay enough attention to revisions. But after eight years, are you still sure that's, you know, The One?

I believe in Lawrence Bloch's advice about washing garbage. Sometimes you can revise all the interesting freshness of a work right out of it.

I'm not really a great judge of my own work.Especially the part where I'm bored means it's boring. Because sometimes I think everything I do is boring, am I always right? Sometimes I'm bored because it comes from life, and the last thing I want is to go over that shit again. Sometimes I'm bored because my facebook friends are all going on vacation or making love or something(maybe simultaneously...I've heard it happens) and I'm like "Guess what, you guys...I've nailed page 37!") and I want what they're having instead.

Actually, the boring advice is somewhat useful. If I'm looking at a scene and I hate it, eventually it dawns on me that maybe the problem is with the scene and not me. Or if I'm racking my brain trying to think of a way to get someone into a car, I'll suddenly go "Duh!" and write "He got in the car."

I know, revelatory, isn't it?

From my local blog: Brooklyn Heights Novelist Jennifer Miller Hawks Her Book Via Novel Strategy: A ‘Novelade Stand’ (with free cookies).

Great idea. And she's getting at least some press, which is part of the goal.

It hurts to hear things like that, though -- seven years spent writing a book, and it really does have only a very short window in which to make an impression, especially today. And the literary novel readership is harder to market to, I think.

Lovely DSF email story, Holli!

I'd think so...some of the best ones don't have elevator-pitch thrills and chills.

Thanks, Sox!

Well, I rewrote the query for Defenders and I'm *really* happy with it. It's so much snappier now.

Leah Archer wishes more than anything that she were a special person, a chosen person, magically destined to make a difference in the world. The kind of person she reads about.

She's not. Her bratty little sister is. And the unfairness of it all is driving her nuts.

After helping to cast an accidental spell, one of Leah's friends is kidnapped away to a kingdom caught in a ten-year winter, and Leah and her sister mount a rescue mission. It'd be the fantasy adventure of Leah's dreams-- except it’s dangerous, and scary, and cold. Except that if her sister embraces the magical heritage Leah would give anything to have, Leah might lose her forever.

Leah can’t shake the feeling that she’s nothing more than set dressing in someone else’s story. But she’s determined to find a way to make a difference, no matter what destiny has to say about it.

DEFENDERS OF THE CROWN is a 50,000-word young adult novel. My short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction, and will soon be featured in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.