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You’re the editor, for crying out loud! I want to wail. You need to know how to end a scene!

“I hate to have to throw myself out of the ring before the bidding gets started, though.” She smiles at me as though she’s the one to be pitied here, not me. Which . . . now that I think of it, I may be a tiny bit to blame for. I may have touted myself just a little after I got her business card last year, ballooning up the fact that one small press almost certainly working out of its garage had expressed interest into the illusion that dozens of New York houses were knocking on my door. Oops. “Anyway, you probably wouldn’t have wanted to dissect all the pieces of your manuscript with me anyway. Especially when I’m only one opinion.”

You’re the only voice I want to hear! my brain wants desperately to blurt out, and I squeeze my hands together tightly to keep from doing so. You’re the only voice that matters!

It’s time for another tactic.

“What,” I begin as lightly as I can, “sort of things did you notice?”

“Hmm.” Her eyes dim slightly. She takes an extra-lengthy time to reply. “Well, for example, the meet.” She puts up a hand. “Now, meeting in a coffee shop is a wonderful idea,” she says encouragingly. She gives a gentle smile as she waves a hand around. “We’re meeting in a coffee shop here, just like thousands of people use the coffee shop as an extension of their living room. There is always something lovely about the ambience. But,” she says after a pause, “it’s just . . . a bit overdone.”

My mind flashes to the words my mystery editor inscribed on the manuscript: Wildly unoriginal.

“I just thought,” I venture, “perhaps it was original considering the way the two characters mistakenly mixed up their cups when they picked them up, only to find out, you know . . .” I shrug with a smile. “They actually ordered the same drink . . .”

“Yes, and I believe Hallmark has enjoyed that opening as well. Time and time again.”

Her smile is tender. I know she’s trying to make light of it all, make it a joke for my sake. And for hers I smile back as the words on my manuscript’s margin flash across my eyes: Nauseating and directly plagiarized from every Hallmark movie in the last ten years.

“Interesting,” I say, nodding as though I’m casually digesting this information and it’s not feeling in the slightest like glass shredding my insides as it goes down. “So the meetup needs some attention.”

“And the characters,” Claire adds, nodding back.

“The characters. Yes. Of course. The characters.” I pause. “How exactly . . . with the characters?”

“Well, for example, Sloan.”

“Sloooan,” I repeat. “Yes. Sloan. Exactly what about Sloan?”

“Sloan has to go.”

Claire delivers the fact of the matter just as easily as she would say, “You know, I think that table lamp has to go. It’s throwing off the vibe in the living room.”

Sloan. The quirky woman desperately in love with Renaldo. The one who inserts herself in every other scene in one bumbling way or another. The one threaded expertly into the story to highlight the movement and growth of the other characters. Sloan.

And precisely how, I want to yell, would I manage taking out a major character without the entire story collapsing?

The mystery editor’s words—We don’t need this character—are crackling through my brain, but I don’t have time to dwell on it.

“And I did have one thought,” Claire continues, her eyes brightening. “Have you ever considered shifting the manuscript to the present tense?”

Have I. Ever considered. Shifting to present tense.

Claire Donovan is replicating the words and thoughts of my mystery editor so well she practically is the editor. Who knows, maybe she actually is the editor. Maybe she is the one who stole into a foreign publishing house in order to sneak up into a secret room, scribble hateful comments on my manuscript, and steal away again. That seems like the only logical conclusion here.

That or, I feel with sickening dread, my mystery editor was right.

Everyone around me is right, and I’m the only one who can’t see the flaws in my own work.

I’ve heard this from my authors before, at least a dozen times. How blinded they get to their own writing. How hard it is to see the story from the reader’s perspective. In my mind, I live in the world of Harpwood, Indiana. I’ve worked so hard and for so long on this story, I know every intricate detail—both written and unwritten.

A sudden mood of despair hits me, and I can’t help but feel my shoulders beginning to slump. All this time I thought I had something. An idea. A spark. All this time, I thought, I may just be able to do this! I may just have a writer’s soul after all! But what am I, really?

Just a girl, sitting in a coffee shop, who’s completely deluded herself.

“Well, I’d better be getting back,” I say, shifting my knees out from underneath the bistro table to stand. I force a little laugh. “And I’m sure you have much more important things to attend to than talking with me all day.” I smile as I speak, my cheeks plastered into formation, although I’m finding it hard to look her in the eye. “Thank you so much for everything, though, Mrs. Donovan. I know I am . . . very small . . . compared to you, and yet even I understand what it’s like to have your in-box flooded with proposals and ideas. I’m truly honored you chose to consider mine.”

I move to stand, all the while gazing fixedly at the floor.