Tearing Pages, Tearing Hair

71º ~ enjoying the cool morning before another 90+ day (I know, Mom, I'm not allowed to complain of the heat since I chose to live south of the freezing Iowa temps! :))  ~ truly the humidity has been bearably low and we've had some nice breezy days

Well, Dear Readers, when last I wrote about the manuscript exchange, I had reordered the entire book and was riding the high of my conversation with Steph.  (Here's the link as Blogger has gone goofy and won't let me embed the link:  http://sandylonghorn.blogspot.com/2010/09/notes-on-reconstruction.html)

Here's what I look like today:

The truth is, the ordering of a manuscript takes a lot of time, and I'm plum out of it if I want to get in on the first round of manuscript submissions this fall.  There are no fewer than five major contests in which I'm interested with deadlines of Sept. 30th.

I've been reading and re-reading my new ordering.  There's a definite pull to go back to what I had before, and I'm confused about this.  Does it mean that the order before was better?  Does it mean that I just grew so comfortable with it that it seems better?  Am I just incapable of seeing the book as Steph sees it?  Has this order business been holding the book back all along?  I am completely willing to work on the order with an editor, but I have to "win" a publisher before we can work on the order.  Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh.  

Panic rising.

I know I need to get the new ordering out to some other folks for comment.  In the meantime, I think I'll split the difference and send the old version out to half the contests and the new version out to the other half.  The proof may just be in the pudding.  (Maybe all the woman in the picture and I need is a big bowl of chocolate and vanilla swirl pudding...alas, no time for that either as grading and schoolwork beckon.)