I spent the last week or so on manuscript revisions. All of them. The whole thing. By April 15, which was yesterday. While millions of other people were scrambling to meet a different deadline, I had my Angels deadline.

So this is pretty much what my week looked like. I did very little besides focus on the 500+ page manuscript. There was some sleeping and I ate the quickest food I could prepare (cereal and sandwiches work for all sorts of meals) and I only did the dishes when the kitchen started to stink.

And I got it done. I didn’t think I could, but I did.

Now the book I planned on finishing some day is done. Well, the major work is done. Now comes all of the production things that have to be done to turn those manuscript pages into an actual book.

Stay tuned.

I have just been on spring break and used the week to work on revisions for my book, Angels of the Underground. There has been a lot to do, especially at the beginning of the manuscript, where the reader has to be drawn into the lives of four very different American women. The one thing the women all had in common was that they left their home country and settled in the far off Philippine Islands. They each had different reasons for doing so, and each thought she had found her particular kind of paradise. That was all upended on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the Philippines.

I was reminded of the journalist Martha Gellhorn (pictured here in 1941 with Chinese military personnel and her husband, Ernest Hemingway) who once observed that “War happens to people, one by one.” That’s how I’ve been thinking about the four women in my book. One by one, they each grappled with the reality of the Japanese attack and the subsequent occupation. They each decided to resist. Though it seemed like an easy decision, it was, of course, fraught with danger. One by one, they did what they thought was right to help bring about an Allied victory. And each one paid a price.

Who can resist images like this? Look at those llamas, just wanting to be free. And off they went.

Today I needed to divert myself from a whole bunch of real world stuff, and I couldn’t take off running like the llamas. So I did my active fleeing into the revisions of my second chapter. For a few hours I got to write about four American women heading off to exciting new lives in the Philippine Islands. That was pretty fun.

A good day, for not being a llama.

Well, I pretty much still feel like this:

But my goal was to rewrite the Introduction, which still hadn’t sufficiently answered the “so what?” question. My book centers on the activities of four American women caught in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation of World War II. For me, the “so what?” was pretty obvious, but I am not my readers. Now I think I have finally explained that this is a riveting story of wartime intrigue and resistance that reveals the far-reaching consequences of imperialism. So in the week ahead I will be revising Chapter One to explain how the United States became involved in the Philippines. Stay tuned.

I am working on revisions for my third book. You’d think I’d be used to the process by now, but no. Revisions of a manuscript are always hard because they aren’t simply corrections. I don’t get to move a few things around and make some different word choices. At least that’s the way it’s been with my manuscripts, and I’m sometimes nervous about what this says about my writerly abilities. So I kind of feel like this all through the revision process:

Because there is actual re-visioning going on with this third book, big things I hadn’t anticipated: throwing out the old introduction and creating a new one from scratch; almost a completely new first chapter as well, though some of it can be cobbled from other chapters; highlighting and foregrounding different things; dumping others. The new version will little resemble the original.

Which makes me think about a piece of advice that is often tossed at writers: Write the book you want to read.

That was the book I envisioned–the one I wanted to read. So that was, in fact, what I wrote–the kind of book that the reader-me is very attracted to.

What I forgot is that my reading tastes are decidedly non-mainstream. I rarely read books, fiction or non, that are on any bestseller lists. (Though as a writer, I certainly wouldn’t object if one of my books, especially this new one, ended up on such a list.) So I am basically clueless about what other readers want.

Which is why I am very grateful–very, very grateful–that I have such a good, exacting editor. And that his assistant is equally good. They know better what needs to go into a book headed for the eyes of readers who aren’t me. So I keep that editorial letter close at hand while I’m working on the revisions. I want to get everything right this time around. And maybe when it’s finally, finally finished, the book will be the one I wanted to read all along.