It’s a strange thing, reading a novel you’ve put years into making something once only imagined. In your head, you have this vision, and while every writer works differently, I think we all work until that vision becomes a solid shape we know is right for the story.
Getting there can take time for some. “Good enough” has different meanings, depending on the person. It’s not that I have a hard time letting go — but because I go into each bigger thing I write challenging myself to do something I’m not sure I can pull off, “good enough” is not enough for me.
Reading for Pleasure
A Magic Life is a fully-formed thing I can now read without losing myself in typos. No longer am I scrutinizing every paragraph, wondering its place in a bigger thing. All connections are made.
Of course, there are still little things I notice, here and there. I know enough writers to know that when they read their published work, they still think, “Man, I wish I could change that tiny thing no one but me probably notices.” But those things are not as common as they were in earlier drafts.
This is the draft where the cadence is clear — the draft read for pleasure. And right now, I’m enjoying being lost in a story about a young girl born in a circus in 1923, and her first steps toward becoming a magician in the 1930s.
