Tag Archives: women’s fiction

I started my women’s contemporary fiction manuscript when my daughter was three-months-old. We celebrated her third birthday this past summer and I’m still doing final edits. The changes are minor, except for two big ones: the title and a main character’s name.

Reading this character’s name makes me want to punch the monitor and I can’t decide if it’s because the character is kind of a jerk, the name is vile or I’m just sick of reading my manuscript. It’s a weird thing to change the character’s name, because it makes me look at him differently. It also feels like I’ve given him a nose job or similar – he’s the same guy underneath, but on a superficial level, he’s changed.

The title of the book is another thing I’m wary of changing. It feels stale to me now. I’ve grown as a writer these past three years (which is why I scrapped the first third of the novel last year) and I feel the current title doesn’t do it justice. But again…am I just suffering from novel fatigue?

I’ve lived with this thing as long as I’ve lived with my kid so I fear I’ve lost some perspective. Luckily for me, I have my fellow Restless Writers to offer some perspective. Ladies?

Lori