Great point about burning through that first draft. I was handing off my chapters to my wonderful CP, and her comments were spot on, but they totally kept my internal editor on. I got hung up for a month on stupid details. When I stopped sending her the chapters as I went, I found my story again. *shaking head, tsk-tsking* Silly, silly me.

Free drinks are fine, too. Can’t please everyone. And I do agree with what you are saying.

I’m writing my second book (the first was never submitted anywhere but may yet get revised) and often struggle with the ‘what if this doesn’t sell’ issue.

Recently I realized that I had to write a book I loved first and foremost, not a ‘book to sell.’ In other words, right now I’m on the draft with the door closed.

Which can be hard for an overly-goal oriented gal like me – and I should get back to that right now.

With a first book, my thought is — good, bad or ugly — you just have to finish the damn thing. It’s like practicing a piece of music. How good would you ever get if every time you made a mistake, you went back and started the piece over again from the begining. Sometimes you’ve just got to play it through.

Yep. As a whole, writers tend to read all kinds of crazy subtext into a simple rejection. Don’t ponder it, just move on.

“When I get a rejection, I am spurred on to do better. Send them my next book with, “oh yeah? Reject this.” And maybe they won’t be able to.”

Exactly.

And limited list is a toughie, too…

I think regarding the author’s best, that sometimes we don’t know it’s not our best until we do something better. I think every book I’ve written was the absolute best book I could have written at that time. But I don’t think “my best” is a fixed point. I like to think it’s always rising.