Hi friends! I’ve been back in New York for about ten days, but so much has happened. A history-making blizzard. A visit from my college roommate. Dinners with friends. Dance parties (plural). Two post-graduation job interviews. And (most importantly!) my first notes and meeting with my thesis advisor, the fantastic Jill Santopolo who is a pretty prolific author and editor. The notes were copious and the meeting went really, really well but …
together we made the decision to start completely over on my manuscript with a lot of changes to the plot/characters/timeline/conceit of the story. I know these changes will be for the best, but, man, it’s hard to look at 275 pages you’ve been working and reworking for a year and think about throwing most of them away.
Today, marks the beginning of me trying to write a new chapter one. It’s so strange, because in some ways I know my main character, Riley, so well from the last year+ we’ve spent together and in other ways the changes I decided to make to her personality/history make writing from her perspective a completely new beast.
It’s hard. But writing is supposed to be hard.
It’s exciting. And writing is supposed to be exciting.
Wish me luck!
Alison Doherty 
I understand. In the deepest part of my heart, I get this.
I know you do. Your blog posts and our emails about just this thing happening were incredibly fortifying through those initial how-on-earth-am-I-going-to-deal moments. The great news is that whenever people have suggested major changes in the past I’ve been really resistant, but when I talked to Jill I thought “oof this is going to be a lot of work but I have a lot of ideas to explore in this new direction”.
Oh, that’s awesome!! We’re in this together, girl.
I feel your pain! I’ve had to start over with my novel. It’s a lot of work. But I think the story is better. I hope you feel that way about yours.