Continuing my tale—started in yesterday’s post—of the importance in having your writing edited, we pick up with what I consider to be the most important scene in my novel Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1…a scene that didn’t exist in the first-draft manuscript.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

That was one of Grandma Ellie’s favorite sayings, usually uttered as encouragement in response to some major event experienced by a family member or close friend. The last time Pan had heard it was after Mom and Dad’s divorce had been finalized. Mom had spent a day crying her eyes out, and Grandma had said it to try and cheer her up. Until this morning Pan had never really understood the phrase, but around four a.m., as she lay in bed unable to sleep, its meaning suddenly became crystal clear.

A fresh start. A new beginning.

Annie had given her that, and so much more. Opened her eyes to a bright, magical world ready to be explored. Put an end to the constant fears about her sanity. Made her understand how special she truly was.

And so, just a little before five o’clock, Pan had gone up to the roof of Dad’s apartment building to welcome the new day—and her new life…

When I wrote the initial draft of Blood Feud, there was no sunrise greeting; no inner reflection; no moment when Pan realized she was more than her “monstervision”—her ability to see the monsters inhabiting the world that had been diagnosed as a psychological disorder when she was six. No real hope for her future.

As I mentioned in the previous post my editor, Howard Zimmerman, had pointed out how dark and angry the tone of the first draft was—a tone he was pretty sure I hadn’t meant to put into it. Pan, according to my descriptions to him, was supposed to be a “happy Goth” who feared her supposed mental problems but overall tried to live a pretty good life despite the obstacles in her way. And that girl, it turned out, was nowhere in the manuscript. Sure, there were flashes of happy Pan here and there, but she mostly spent Blood Feud being bitter and far too snarky—snarky to the point where even I, after rereading the pages, wanted to slap her. That needed to change, and quick. I needed to find a balance between angst-ridden Goth and loving young woman, or this character was going to be a major turn-off to every reader. And she was the star of the book!

And then, while making notes based on his edits, a song on the radio suddenly caught my attention: James Taylor’s cover of the Drifters’ 1962 hit “Up On the Roof,” and its lyrics by Carole King:

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below can’t bother me…

As you may have figured out by now—if you’re a regular reader of this blog—my musical tastes tend to run all over the place (“eclectic” doesn’t begin to cover it). In prior posts I’ve written about how Murray Gold’s “This Is Gallifrey” composition from the Series 3 Doctor Who sound track influenced how I wrote the confrontation between Pan and the fallen angel Zaqiel at the end of Blood Feud; and how HorrorPops’ rockabilly girl-power tune “Missfit” became Pan’s anthem (“My fist! In the middle of your face!”). Well, here it was “Up On the Roof” that helped me to finally, truly understand who Pandora Zwieback was, and exactly how to find her center—and the heart of the story I was trying to tell.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Those words just popped into my head, and immediately I could see Pan sitting on a rooftop, watching the sun come up as she drank coffee in a Frankenstein mug. A quiet moment, a pause for breath between dramatic scenes—a time when Pan could process everything that had been revealed to her by Annie in a previous chapter and realize she wasn’t a freak, wasn’t alone, wasn’t destined to live a miserable life. The moment when she stopped being a damaged soul, a misfit, and became a stronger young woman. There was a new world before her, waiting to be explored, and she couldn’t wait to take the first step toward it.

And I couldn’t wait to write it.

As clichéd as it sounds, the words flowed from me into the keyboard. It turned out to be the easiest chapter to write—and the shortest (4 pages)—and for me it became the scene around which the entire book revolves. It also completely eliminated the dickish qualities Dave Zwieback had exhibited in the first draft; now he was the loving, supportive father he was always meant to be. A win-win situation all around, then.

Tomorrow: how it all turned out.

“So, now…” Dad reached back and pulled [Pan’s] sketch from his pocket, then unfolded the paper and held it up to the lightening sky. The warm colors she’d chosen for the drawing shone even brighter. “This, I like a lot. It’s so different from your usual dark stuff. Very colorful. Very . . .” He smiled. “Dare I say, lighthearted?”

Pan grinned.

“It’s a new style,” she said. “For a new me.”