How many authors dream of just waking up one morning with a brilliant book all written, edited, and ready to send to a Big Five publisher, who will immediately sign off on it and send it to be published, printed, and sell a bazillion copies? Probably all of us…

Sadly, wishes are not reality--in most cases. I'm sure there are a few authors out there who have lucked out and found amazing success without putting in the endless grueling hours of work.

And then there's the rest of the world, those of us who get out of bed, go to our day job, and struggle to find the time to get in our writing. When we do write, it's a blissful escape from the world around us, and we're so happy to finally finish that awesome book we're writing. We send it off to our beta readers and editors hoping to hear glowing reviews…

WHAM!!! We're hit with some comments that totally make us rethink the entire book itself. Things like "I love the concept of the book, but…" There's always that infernal "but" that drives me up the wall!

So, it's back to the drawing board to rethink a story that you thought was nearly complete. You stress, you obsess, you struggle to come up with a way to make it better, more relatable to your audience. You're nearly there, and then you read another comment that sets you right back where you started.

You've got to love it!

I may be ranting a bit, but that's what just happened to me last night. I was so happy to be working on Book 2 of my story that I failed to realize Book 1 had some serious flaws in it. Thus I am back at the drawing board, basically having to rework the entire second act of the book just to make it more interesting and help the audience connect with the main character of the story.

I'm not complaining--well, at least I'm trying not to complain. The life of a writer is hard, no matter how enjoyable it is to write a great story. Thankfully, I've got good friends to help me find the flaws in my writing and correct them, even if it does feel like backwards progress.

I wish that writing were as magical a process as it was made to seem. I wish that it wasn't so darn hard to make a half-demon assassin a likeable character. And most of all, I wish I could write while I was asleep!