Early mornings

I've been getting up early these past few weeks. Spending an hour or so taking in the smell and beauty of my Christmas tree while writing. I've accumulated my notes from the Big Sur weekend and have begun sorting, thinking and adjusting my manuscript. I get so dang pumped during these revisions. I love this story and it's just getting better. I'm adding more brush strokes; wonderful characterization details and simplifying my dialog (I had a few comments at Big Sur suggesting the girls' dialogue sounded too formal). It's been fun although, after this round of revisions, I need to get it out there.
This is the worst part of writing a novel...heeding editors advice by not sending out the manuscript until it's ready. That's a bit hard for a writer to judge...at least objectively. We have to listen carefully to the comments we receive from our critique groups, workshop participants and friends and weed out the compliments. We need to search for the truly valuable comments, fix what is really posing problems in the novel then, yikes, decide for ourselves.
My plan is to continue to rise early, take in the beauty of my house and rewrite until it feels right.
And for the realistic side of me, I intend to give myself a deadline and get this story off to a couple of editors who will love it.
Happy Christmas to all my two dozen blog readers....I'll be back after the big day!