New strategy for fiction writing

I've been in a slump, recently, about getting the Frontier Team published. The Summer of Rejection really took it out of me. And I have some revisions that I'd like to make to Book 1, specifically to make the main character more vivid and recede the other characters a bit. So it seemed that I should hold off on trying to get it published until I made the revisions, and then I got paralyzed about making the revisions...and more rejections came in... you can imagine.

So, at least partly in response to the "too wholesome" criticisms I seemed to be receiving from the hip agents who were rejecting me, I started my own personal rebellion against wholesomeness: I started writing another book, a book that I had vowed to write when I was nine years old, in response to what I perceived to be (and what in many ways was) parental tyranny: My Father the Health-Food Nut. I've been thinking about rebellion for many years, and trying to make distinctions between the right kind of rebellion (acting on principle to create a condition proper to humankind even if social forces are against you) and the wrong kind of rebellion (stamping your foot and wailing because you don't like something). The kids in this book use the American Revolution as a guide in their quest for independence and self-determination.

So, thanks to encouragement from my writing buddy Adrienne, I decided to hold off on completing Frontier Team Book 2 until my Book 1 revisions were done, but I'm also writing this other book because it's a heck of a lot more fun than revisions.

Getting the oomph to make the Book 1 revisions was getting me down, though...couldn't seem to find it. But Ella, blessed Ella, might have saved me. She finally, finally, is interested in The Frontier Team. So we started reading it together today.

We finished Chapter 1. "More, more!" she cried excitedly.

We read Chapter 2. "Keep going, don't stop" Ella said again. We had to set it aside then, though; I thought I'd end it on a cliffhanger to keep her interested. It seems to be working.

And, reading it aloud is helping me see good stuff to cut.

As a matter of principle, the kids are not means to my ends, of course. But they do come in awfully handy sometimes.