Chapter One of Jess, about final

A young friend, 14, said one of those wise things that always surprise me. Don't know why it should surprise me that she's wise at 14, but it does.

I was complaining how hard it was to rewrite these first three chapters so they'd be in final form to submit.
She said, 'They tell us in dance – When it starts being a job ... quit.'

In other words, if it's not fun, don't do it.

I don't know why this helped, but it did.


So ... Today I finished another jiggle-this-and-that-word-around of Chapter One. It feels about done.
IF it is not too dense.
IF it is not overwritten.
IF I have not lost touch with the POV character's emotion.

I'll set it aside for a week. May I can come back and make an assessment. I'm either astronomically way off and should redo the entire first quarter of the story ... or I'm about ok. I will get an expert opinion on which it is when I submit.


And onward to Chapter Two. Once again, my goal is to eschew the glib and dig deep into the character. Free the man up from the matrix.


So weird. I dreamed about the character Sebastian last night. Never done that before.