There is a feeling of satisfaction when you submit your completed manuscript to your editor. I’ve done the hard work of character development, gotten that rough and nearly unreadable first draft down on paper and cleaned it up to include red herrings, real clues, and false trails. The plot and characters are carrying the story and I really love them all. Now it’s time to get the critical eye of an editor who can see, not what you meant to write, but what is on the page and, as important, what is missing.

The manuscript for The Adoption came in at 78,000 words. I have a little room to add and make improvements without having to cut some of the existing story. That is a luxury that I rarely enjoy.

This story goes to my editor on October 1 and then there is a lull, as she does her work and I wait and wonder. During that time, I write as fast as I can on the next story and try to get most of that ugly first draft down on the electronic page. I’ve started that story already and am edging up to 10,000 words.

It’s hard to begin a new draft, figure out new characters and set them in the plot I outlined. I don’t know them yet and I’m still invested in the people I created for the first book. It’s like going to a party where you know everyone’s title, but you don’t know them as a person. And the finished story seems so much better than the big sloppy mess I am wrestling from my head and onto the page.

I find the story in my head and the one that is complete are the most alluring. But that is because they are not begun or well done. While the other is being born, and that is always a painful, messy business.

Best get back to work before The Adoption returns to my inbox with all those pesky suggestions!

Author Jenna Kernan working on the first draft.

The Adoption

Dani Sutton is the daughter of privilege and married to a man she adores, an up-and-coming Florida Circuit Court Judge on his way to election to the state supreme court. But after a devastating car wreck that injured her twin, Dani checks into a psych center for treatment. Upon release, her husband shares the good news. He has found them a newborn baby girl through a private adoption agency. But shortly after the baby arrives, a menacing woman appears, and Dani recognizes something is very wrong.