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The Generosity of Readers

The light and shadow, solidity and wisp, Autumn. I had more brilliant pictures of Fall color more intense than any here since I arrived eighteen years ago. But this one captures best the complexity of my readers' comments and the effect they have had on my re-write of Widow's  Walk. Five talented and generous people have now read my first draft, and a few more are right in the middle of it. Already their comments are giving the narrative more depth and filling it in where I took too much for granted.

I spend from three days to a week or more with each reader, returning to the narrative through their eyes, listening as deeply as is possible for me to their questions, suggestions, confusions, reactions. Each reader has his or her unique gift that motivated me to request their assistance, from personal experience with the flow and content in this novel, to a particularly accomplished sense of literary structure, to a creative ability with language, to a habit of reading contemplatively. None of them disappoint, and all are focused and keen in their critique.

I am so excited! Here I am, experiencing my novel again and again with the comments of each reader, It's a bit like this: if I were a painter I would be pondering my canvas and another very skilled painter would be standing at my shoulder pointing out this and that. A stroke of aquamarine, perhaps, or a thread-thin line of crimson cutting through. Soften the sharp edge of orange. Apply a tiny bit of gold leaf, just here, like sunlight in the summer field.

Do my readers know how much they give to me? Because of them I continue. They are so close to me as I undertake this task that I feel them, each of them, in my heart and mind, my fingers and my soul. With each of them I write this book again. I see the difference even a comma in the absolutely right place makes. (Do you see how I scrambled the words of that last sentence against all the rules? I love doing that!)

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