Reimagineering

The folks who design the Disney theme parks are called "imagineers," engineers with imagination. I'm married to an engineer. From meeting many of his colleagues I have often wondered how long and far the Disney people had to look to find a full complement of such creatures. Most of the ones I know have math down cold and they're fabulous at A to B to C logic. Out of the box thinking? Not so much. (My husband, of course, is the exception. Maybe I should loan him to the Magic Kingdom.)

But I digress.

I have a contemporary romance about to be published, the first of a series of five I have planned, written, drafted, outlined, dreamed about, rewritten, passed around to writer friends to read--just about anything you can do to a manuscript, I have done to four of the five novels.

After the first one was accepted by Crimson Romance for publication, I asked about submitting the second one. Sure, the editor said. Send it any time. I went through it one more time for luck, re-spell checked it and off it went.

Less than a week later, while working on the third novel, in one of those light-bulb moments, the glitch in the one I'd already sent to the editor appeared. I don't like to read books about women who live in towers, sleep in glass coffins or need princes on white horses to swoop in and make their world right. I like women who make their way themselves and choose, rather than need, to have a man along with them. That's what I try to write.

But in the second book, not only had the hero rescued the heroine once, he did it twice, while she sat around waiting for it to happen. To make it worse, another woman helped. Not only was this not what I like to read, this was not who I believed my heroine to be.

So, I wrote an embarrassing email withdrawing the book from the editor's consideration. And I started the task of reimagineering the book. I know what I want her to do. Now I need to use the engineer side of my brains to figure out the structure so she does it in a way that makes the story arc work?

Wish me luck.