Now that I’ve tightened le manuscript (as in, deleted roughly 5,000 words simply from eliminating needless dialogue tags and instances where one character “looks,” “glances,” or “sees” another), and I’ve read it over and don’t know what the heck else to do with it, I’ve got to get another pair of eyes on it…again.

For some reason I’m finding this harder the second time around.

So I’m reading it again. Taking out more words. And worrying about the following things:

• Will anyone actually like this main character?
• How’s the pacing? I’m bored in places, but I’ve read them dozens of times, so is it just me, or my lackluster plot?
• Does my main character have enough interiority? (for some excellent posts on this, go to Katherine Longshore’s post at the YA Muses, and Mary Kole’s on Kidlit)
• Is the leading dude enough of a heart-throb?
• Does the “woe is me I’m so hopeless about everything” section drag on too long?
• Am I ever going to convince certain members of my critique group that dropping the prologue is in the story’s best interest?
• Will anyone who read it the first time like the changes I made? Or will they grumpily say, “Why didn’t you change X? Why did you change Y? Why did I bother giving you advice last time when you followed it in such a shoddy way?”
• Is this story anything anyone will ever want to read?
• Maybe I should go tinker with software to make a book trailer, even though I don’t have a book yet.
• Is it time for me to just get a job already? Possibly creating book trailers for the successful writers out there?