Finally--Rewrite off to readers (and agent) and what I learned

I know I've been absolutely silent on here and I apologize. I've been dedicating myself to completing the rewrite of my book LIFE AND BETH and it's taken WAY longer than I ever imagined. But, finally, finally, finally, I finished. I'm not fooling myself that more revisions aren't in store before my lovely agent Victoria Marini subs, but it feels good to have reached this milestone.

And you know what I learned? No matter what your writing method is--seat of the pantster, outliner, whatever, there are no shortcuts. I wrote the first draft of this book almost a year ago, in a very random way. It was DREADFUL. Then I created my (very pretty and useful looking) plot map. That helped a lot. THEN, I started to submit to agents and most of them came back and told me--yeah--we like your premise, we like your writing, but the whole thing falls apart like a flabby souffle.

So, then I downloaded Scrivener and used THAT to help me RE-OUTLINE the whole mess--and still, still I had a long haul ahead of me.

So what's the lesson here? The lesson is that there is no substitute for an awesome critique group and beta readers who target your weak spots like a laser beam. Thank you to all of you geniuses for getting me through this!

I am very excited to sink my teeth into my next project, which is writing and illustrating a picture book. There is also my untitled WIP, which I am going to outline on Scrivener FIRST.