Today I'm just waiting for straggling exams to come in. This means it's time for some creativity.
My first reader (aka my husband) says the second half of my latest book goes too fast. He's right, of course. So the task du jour is to work on adding a little more substance into the second half. This is not, I repeat not, an easy thing to do without disrupting flow. So my work is cut out for me.
This is a reminder of what I learned a long time ago in writing books, but it may be a good piece of advice in general: Never fall in love with your results so much that you can't hear constructive criticism.
I believe so many things are a process -- writing, teaching, any skilled labor or hobby. We can take them just for fun, but those with a growth mindset will always push themselves to improve.
It took a lot for me to get there, in part because I think writers' immediate response to writing a book is "This is my brainchild! My masterpiece!" Our second response is "This is horrible! I can't bear to edit it!" Somewhere in-between that is the desire to write the best book possible. That's where the growth is.
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