Oh yeah, this is happening

You guys?  Really, you guys?  Are you listening?  Cause this is serious. 

In Dreams keeps me up at night. 

It's true.

You have to understand that I had no idea what I was getting into when I wrote that book. I just wanted to write the story.  I wanted to "tell" that story.  Those characters... that story... that book... it's part of my heart.  So when I put it out and it got ripped.to.shreds.-  well, that killed a small part of me. 

But what I couldn't see then... that I can see now... is that I didn't write that book very well.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that story and I think it is AMAZEBALLS!  But, I'm not sure I actually told it very well.

We all know how after the bad reviews started rolling in, that I found an editor and she did grammar and formatting edits for me. That was enough- at first.

But it's not enough anymore.

It's completely f'ed up that everytime someone tells me they are reading In Dreams, I cringe inside and assume they'll hate it. I'm genuinely SHOCKED when they say they liked it.  SHOCKED.  That's how screwed up I am from all these negative reviews.  Not to mention from everything i've learned so far about writing. 

I mean, if you read In Dreams and then you read Chance Encounters- I would hope you could see the difference in the storytelling.  I've grown.  Even if it's just a little- I've grown.  But mostly, my editor keeps me focused.  She challenges me and pushes me to be better.  To write more descriptively.  To stop telling and SHOW people.  To stop changing point of view every 2 sentences.  Apparently that's hard for me, cause um... I write the way I see things in my head. And I think she was spot on when she told me that I write like a director-  I write my book like a screenplay. 

I can't tell you how much sense that makes to me.

So anyway- the point i'm trying to make is...  there is absolutely NO REASON ON THIS GREEN EARTH that In Dreams should stay the way it is. I feel like I owe it to my story, to my characters and to myself- to do some rewrites on it to fix the issues.

The story itself isn't going to change. But there are things that need to be addressed. And I guess the bottom line is, at this point, I want to change them.  I want to fix it.  Because I want people to read it and not think it sucks. 

Otherwise, I'm always going to have this book out in the world that I think is only ok.  That I know I could have written better, if i'd only known then what I know now.  It hangs over my head and I literally think about it in my sleep. 

So that's it.  Before I start on Before the Dreams, I'm going to rewrite In Dreams.  And it's going to be awesome.  lol