It if for you, dear reader, I put up with this torture.

Rewriting is a Pandora's box of choices. Every sentence, every word can be changed or moved.

I try to stick with what's natural, but...it sometimes seems impossible to find the right mix. Each word change affects the next sentence, which affects the next. Before I know it, I'm down some path where I don't want to be or completely lost or at the edge of a cliff.

I change a character's motivation, and that changes one scene, which affects another character, which changes another scene, and before I know it, I'm tangled up in knots.

Meanwhile, I start to lose the feeling I had when I first wrote the scene, so now it is the words that matter, words which are representative of those feelings but aren't the feelings.

But isn't that exactly what happens to the reader? They don't feel those feelings before the words exist, the words are there to create the feeling.

So I try to make sense, try to keep the words flowing, try for surprising but satisfying ways to say things, try to smooth out the inconsistencies and clarify the confusions and sharpen the action.

It is for the reader, because the I already know what the scene was supposed to do, I know the story in my head. But it came out on the page missing elements, or with too much emphasis on the wrong things, or out of order, or with awkward phrasing.

So it for you, dear reader, that I put up with this torture.