In 2008, I seem to have blown off an agent’s request for a rewrite. I’ve had a lot of feelings about that every single day for about six months – many of them self-flagellating. I mean, why-why-WHY would I ruin a perfectly good chance to be represented by someone who seemed to really like my book? Weeeell, it may have something to do with the fact that the rewrite refused to go the way she wanted it. When I looked at the list of what she thought it needed to be saleable, I initially agreed – mostly. I quickly wrote up a list of notes chapter by chapter to fix the problems she saw, and set about fixing them. The only problem was that fixing the problems created new bigger ones. By making Cyrus more accessible to Freedom, I somehow robbed him of the spark that everyone had loved about him. I only had to give it to one reader beyond myself to know it wasn’t going to work. That was a huge sock in the gut – admitting to myself that I couldn’t guarantee these changes she wanted to see because I didn’t actually believe in them myself after seeing how they looked on paper. The draft worked in that it did what I think she wanted me to do – it got into the action quicker and set up the romantic plot better, but I just hated what I did to Cyrus. Cyrus IS that book to me. So I guess I knew months ago that I wasn’t ever going to send it in. What I regret is that I never answered the agent and let her know that while I appreciated her feedback and offer to look at it again, I just didn’t see the changes helping. I don’t know why I couldn’t do that.
I guess what I learned from that experience was that before you submit, you have to consider how far you can go with a certain story to get it published. I thought I would do ANYthing for a chance to see Intended in print. But evidently I wasn’t willing to lose that essence of Cyrus’s spark.
Wrapping up Heart on Fire is hard because I have so many options. There’s the story my mother probably wishes I’d tell. There’s the story I know my CP would like me to tell. There’s the one I think the publishing world expects me to tell (I’ll give you a hint – it has a “satisfying” ending). And then there’s the story I wanted to tell when I started this thing. I’m fully aware after writing for eight years that what I find satisfying isn’t necessarily what other find satisfying. And I’m so torn between telling the stories I want to tell and telling the stories I seem to think people want to hear.
I don’t really like books with neat little happy endings, but I gather I’m a minority reader. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy escapist fiction – I definitely find it has it’s place in my reading queue – but the books I remember are the ones that make me feel or think deeply. I don’t object to happy endings, just neat ones. I don’t know about yours, but my life hasn’t been neat. Most of the greatest things in my life have grown out of the greatest adversity – and I want my characters to experience that same sort of growth. Is that so wrong?
Obviously I have to write the story I set out to write here. But the bigger problem is going to be sticking to it when I hit the submissions stage – knowing how far I’m willing to go to gain an opportunity to see it on the shelf.
