Toni, I hope you can get over it in time. Look on reading GSAW as research — what a book looks like before great editors see it for what it could be and help the writer pull out the magic.

The great Maxwell Perkins, editor to Hemingway and Fitzgerald, took on a newbie named Thomas Wolfe, saw something in the mess he handed in, worked long months with him, and helped him create “Look Homeward, Angel”. If the original LHA manuscript had survived I’m guessing nobody in their right mind would have published it.

The same is true of so many great writers: their first attempts might have shown flickers of genius but it took some heavy editing to bring it out and make it presentable.

Aaand, I think I have the beginnings of a new blog…