Amazing Retreat!

I spent last weekend at a Novel Revision Retreat and it was incredible! My head is still buzzing with ideas -- for both the novel I'm revising and my wip. D'Anne Love, Deborah Noyes Wayshak and Jamie Weiss Chilton (need I say more?) all had such concrete and valuable advice and were friendly and helpful all weekend long. Saturday night we had First Pages and they were the BEST ones I'd ever seen at a conference! And Deborah and Jamie were able to offer suggestions and comments reading them cold. That was impressive. The whole atmosphere was cozy, supportive and enthusiastic. I feel good about the revisions I need to do, and positive about the direction the wip is going. Remind me I said that when I am banging my head on my desk at some point in the future! The retreat was just the boost I needed to dive back into my writing. Let's hope I can keep that momentum going!

Pondering POV

Good news -- got a detailed revision letter from my editor for my mg novel! All her comments were reasonable and will make the story stronger -- IF I can make the changes. (that's the scary part!) She did suggest I try writing this story in third person instead of first person, and that's really got me thinking about POV. It's weird, my pbs are written in third person but when I write for older readers I switch to first person. I guess I like to make personal, funny (to me, at least!) remarks in first person. But, it would probably be easier to show the MC's emotions and how he changes if I wrote in third person. Oh, the decisions! I did rewrite the first chapter in third person and well, it seemed flat to me. Part of the problem is I've rewritten the first 3 chapters at least a zillion times and it's hard to get excited about them anymore. But, I was surprised that I started thinking about this story from different angles and directions. I came up with a new beginning. I always worry about being funny but this time I want to concentrate on the STORY and then see where the humorous bits fit. In my mind, the story could be deeper and richer -- I'm just not sure I can pull it off. We'll see. But I'm kind of excited about the story again and I'll need that to get me through the revisions. Instead of going over the manuscript line by line, I'm setting it aside and just opening a new file and writing the story in third person. I have no idea if it will work -- could be successful or could be a train wreck. Is there such a thing as a successful train wreck? Off I go, diving into the unknown!