I got some feedback on the third draft of chapter five and people seemed bored with it. I don't know if everyone feels that way but its troubling. Other readers thought there were too many, I don't know, sex-obsessed men chasing after Jael. That there weren't enough normal men, women and children. That's not entirely true but it's feedback from someone who's judgment I think I trust. (At the very least she can write, so it's harder to discard her feedback) It's discouraging.
Steven Pressfield (http://www.stevenpressfield.com/) would say that kind of feedback feeds the 'Resistance' inside me. It does make me discouraged but I have to fight through that. If the book's not as good as it can be, I have to make it better. No one else can re-write it for me.
Oh, but I want to start writing something else! All this editing and critiquing...it's not as much fun as just writing.
Ok, new game plan:
I'm going to start working hard on the fourth draft I was already planning on picking up the pace. Now I'm going to do that and modify the urgency and the nature of the threat to Jael. It will also strengthen my main villain.
But you know, I kinda like the way I wrote it originally. It felt more organic and natural. The threat to Jael coming from the very people she's sworn to protect, people she's constrained against harming. I liked that. But we'll see how this new draft reads.
One good thing about this, it'll get me writing, even if it's just re-telling the first few chapters.
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