The Miracle of Wine

Last week I had an ace critique from Tara Moore - a friend and well established writer.  First I felt glum - would HAVE to re-write TRF - there's nothing else to do, then I felt a few good tweaks would do it.  In the last few of weeks I have really enjoyed re-writing - but the feeling that I must kill my darlings - the historical scenes - is depressing me a little.  I have enjoyed making Leo more sexy and "romantic" - two people had said he was a wimp - I had an interesting little frisson - the man on whom he's based is clearly less exciting than my heroine thinks.  So I've had to "man up" the hero - for the purposes of fiction - but my anxiety is that, the more I write towards the conventional format, the more I lose what I'm trying to say... and the more I look at it in that way, I find that I should lose a lot of the insights... oh God!  I'm not actually writing a romantic novel - I was thinking of pitching it as an "anti-romantic romantic novel".  But I'm confused.

So I went downstairs in a bit of a gloom, but somehow, polpettone, salad and courgettes with pesto had the effect of perking me up - or was it the very good bottle of wine we had with it.  We had one of the James-and-Polly wines: Ch. Mirefleurs 2007 - a pleasant claret.  The theory is that we drink a nice bottle of wine once a month - to make the case last.   After the wine, the cheese and a bit of bread I felt immediately more cheerful, almost as if I was going to make a success of the book.