Drafting is rough. (And that's okay!)

I know the revision process better now, and I think it's made the drafting process less intimidating.

Project A has spent the year going back and forth between my agent and me as we've worked on revisions. Whenever it's been in my agent's hands, I've kept busy working on Project B, also a middle-grade novel. Today, I realized I was on the verge of the last scene and I might as well push through, so I did. I even have a last line that I don't hate.

I made a lot of additions to my revision list today, some about the scene I was in the process of writing and some about the novel as a whole. There are some blanks in the last few chapters because one of the revision list items is to figure out how each secondary-character classmate feels about the main events, and those decisions will determine who says or does certain things that, for now, I just needed any classmate to say or do in order to move forward. The word count is pretty low right now, but that's okay because the revisions are going to add more words.

Although the concept of writing a revision list as I go isn't new at all, I leaned on it more heavily this time than I have in the past. Now that I've done such extensive revisions on Project A, I know what people are talking about when they say revising is easier than writing a first draft. I know that when I'm getting everything down, it's a lot to think about making sure each character is well-rounded but distinct and everything is consistent and logistically possible and the dialogue tags aren't hokey and I don't make people nod five times on the same page. I know that I can go back and first make sure that one character displays a particular set of traits but not too much, and then make sure another character displays a different set of traits but not too much, and then make sure someone who lived on Main Street in Chapter 1 doesn't suddenly live on High Street in Chapter 10, and then double-check the science behind the chapter with the messy experiment, and then make some of my characters shake their heads instead of nodding because conflict, darn it, conflict!

I know I can trust the process. And I'm excited to start the next phase of it in 2016!

Why do I love Pop Culture Happy Hour so much?

I'd say I have an average level of interest in pop culture. I have favorite and not-favorite-but-I-like-'em TV shows and movies, but there are plenty of popular ones I haven't seen. I love me some late-night comedy and, while we're at it, some Ellen, and love that it's easy to watch all of the above whenever I feel like it. Most music makes me pretty happy, but I don't have a ready response to the ubiquitous "what kind of music do you listen to" question, and I don't think I'm well-informed at all about current artists. Even books for adults--I read some, but I definitely feel less aware of what's current now that I've been out of the bookstore for over a year. In short, my relationship with pop culture is casual, a far cry from my obsessive relationship with children's lit.

But I can't get enough of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Before you write me off as the sort of person who only likes pop culture if it's on NPR, I hasten to add that most of my NPR listening tends toward the less serious shows, along the lines of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Often, I enjoy PCHH for the same reason I might enjoy a talk show interview with the star of a movie that interests me--it's fun to spend time thinking about something you like and maybe learning more about it.

Naturally, I'm more engaged when the subject matter is something I've seen or planned to see (and it's a plus that PCHH does consider books part of pop culture). If absolutely nothing about the episode description interests me, I might even skip it. But this morning, as I started catching up on the podcast, I noticed something about my listening tendencies, not for the first time. The first episode in line started with a discussion of the movie Bridge of Spies; I'd downloaded it because of the promised second section, a more general analysis of Tom Hanks's career. (Who can't find something of interest in the star of Forrest Gump,  Apollo 13,  *and* a million rom-coms?) I haven't seen Bridge of Spies, and it doesn't sound like something I'm personally likely to rush out and see. But still, I found myself interested in the analysis of who this movie might appeal to and why. What was special about it? What was prosaic? What was a throwback?

The thing is, that's exactly how the people around me and I look at children's books. We raise these sorts of questions about them, we decide that the questions are important and worth spending time and brain power on, and we analyze them at length. The who-might-it-appeal-to question was particularly important in bookselling, but all the facets are of interest.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a PCHH interview with Robert Galbraith J. K. Rowling in my queue.