What does the Main Character want?

I am so excited about my writing progress today.
Because of my accident (and then losing three days to drug-induced sleep and not being allowed to use my arm for over a week) I abandoned one of the picture books I was working on for my September packet. It just wasn't going to get done.

What to substitute?
I took Wednesday afternoon off to organize, plan, and write. I played with a couple of stories. Then I pulled DARK out again.

DARK had been discussed in the workshop part of my stay at Vermont College in July. Everyone agreed that it needed major changes. I was devastated. Only one person in the workshop "got it." And even she suggested changes. I had not done a good job presenting the story.

During the past few months I tried several approaches to the story. Nothing worked.

I must have been thinking about this story pretty hard back there in my "back brain," because suddenly last Wednesday I had an idea. I wanted to go back to my first way of presenting it -- first person with no indication as to whether the speaker was a boy or a girl. Because this is an "everyman" type of story.

I loaded it onto my laptop and brought it to the 8-year old's gymnastic class. Got a good third of it re-written. Today is my usual day off. (We get Fridays off when we work Saturday at the library.) About 2:00 in the afternoon, I settled down with the laptop and plowed into the story, again.

The basic revision is done. And it responds to most of the criticisms it got in the workshop.
(The most important thing I was directed to think about is -- WHAT DOES THE MAIN CHARACTER WANT? And -- does he get it by the end of the story? I think the answer now is, yes.)

Now to figure out how to put the rest of my packet together -- it's due Monday.
-wendieO