And I always save those scenes in another document, because there might be something I can use in a different work.

I find those boring scenes by printing out the manuscript and going through it with a pen. As I read each page, I mark the sections that have conflict with “CONFLICT,” and similarly mark sections that show character or add story information. When I’m doing my revision, if there’s a page or scene that doesn’t have at least one of these markings on it, I know it had to go.

@Deb—Awesome! Most moms are too kind to help with anything. (My mom’s great, English degree, former English teacher, current academic coach. She’s told me a few things, but I know she holds back because she doesn’t want hurt my feelings.)

@M—I totally agree on writing with the door closed. I’m not sure critique groups are for me, since I don’t dare show my first chapter until the last chapter is written (in my last WIP, I changed who the bad guy was in the opening scene twice), and then I’m really impatient about getting the whole thing through. I don’t think six weeks (or really, nearly any amount of time at all) can always be enough to find plot holes—often holes are things that we just forgot to explain, but already know about, so we think they’re in there.

@Carol—Oh, I hear you. I keep wanting to move scenes around in my story, but then I run into problems like “Oh, but Character C can’t do Y here; she doesn’t know about X yet. That would make Y cruel here. It only makes sense where it is.” Readers really do help. I’ve found myself combining scenes a lot to keep in the info I needed and still move the story along.