Fresh Eyes

I started working on Voice again this week, re-reading and fine-tuning and underlining a reaction to an event which was missing in the previous draft.

This is a book which starts out action-heavy, and as it has been quite a few months since my last look at it, I managed to get something closer to "reader reaction" to the story.  You can never truly read your own writing as a reader would (even if every reader was the same), but you can step back from the details and get caught in the story.

And, damn, I'm AWFUL to my characters.

Physically Medair comes out of the story better than most of them (Cass is by far my most-injured), but I think she is the most brutalised 'spiritually'.  Part of this is the product of the person she once was, a child of unthinking privilege, and also because this story is probably the novel of mine with the 'largest' theme, but she grew up so idealistic and proud, and I keep kicking her in the face.