Selkie was in the hands of a literary agent for nearly a year. He suggested edits and revisions that tightened and improved the manuscript. The narrative has a smoother, more powerful flow now. Even though the agency ultimately decided not to represent me, I'll always be grateful for the suggestions. But as I read the story afresh, I am seeing possibilities for a few new scenes, ones that link the story in a fuller way, as well as some additions to several existing scenes.
Though I am not altering the novel's core, just listening to the needs of the characters and the logic of narrative, I do not think I would have recognized these openings without the agent's criticism first. (Another author suggested some of them about four years ago; I couldn't glimpse even the possibility back then! So I'd better thank her now, too.)
I'm also in the prep stages for the next issue of Memory Stick, my zine. Although the stories for each issue are new, the format--the framework--remains the same. Cover, Table of Contents; a book review, a brief, amusing anecdote for the back cover. And a theme for the particular issue, from romance to embarrassment. Today I'm recognizing parallels between the ways that a book manuscript becomes galleys becomes a first edition of a book, all the same story and yet subtly (or not so subtly) different from each other, and the ways a zine changes from issue to issue and yet still remains the same. Selkie Song has always been the story of how a magical creature changes an ordinary boy's life, and vice versa. Memory Stick is always a way to share family, personal and ancestral narratives. A transient publication like a zine, and the longer, slower process of a book--both go through additions and editions. It's all a matter of finding the strongest framework and the clearest story flow.