Using Robert’s Rules of Writing:
Start the book with Dielli crawling out of the bedroom to find her aunt and uncle, not with the dream. (Really?)
“Figure out what the action is … and then start writing just a fraction before that action begins.”
Maybe reorder, so that it starts with Dielli killing the spider? Not telling her folks about the problem? What?

Start with the spider on the window? Dielli grabbing the broom out of Jeska’s hand?

Perfect the Villain.
I introduced a bad guy and then just dropped him out of the story. I need to make him a more substantial character. Someone needs to overhear him telling about Dielli’s dream.

Heroes are Imperfect.
What is Dielli’s flaw? It doesn’t have to be fatal, but she does have to have one. Insert it into the storyline. Make it something that does hurt her now and again and eventually becomes a huge deal.

That she keeps problems to herself? What?

What anecdotes do you tell best?
Use those in the story.

God’s intervention seems too fake, too deux ex machina. So what can you do instead? What will make it seem less strange? Tell stories that show the gods’ intervention outside of Dielli’s life too.

Make smaller mountains she has to climb.

Perhaps write the story of the power encounter as a short story. See where you go with that.

Revise the part on the scribe work.

Rework the standing outside the door waiting for K and L to open it. Maybe they can hear tears inside? What?

“[N]onfiction sells more easily than fiction. Newspapers… have a bottomless craving for news stories, features, trend pieces, profiles, travel essays, and humor columns. They don’t just want these things, they need them.”

Look at how your favorite writers catch your attention. What do they do with their characters? why do you like them so much? Scrutinize. Then try their tricks.

#96 When you pick a project, you find things everywhere that relate to it specifically. So you have to pick a project.

#97 “The more specific you become, the more generally felt your writing will be.”
Perhaps I should go back to Dielli and the guy at the door… but I wanted her to be unaware of what was happening, to not recognize it. How could I talk about the woman who was assaulted and how she felt while introducing Dielli? Perhaps she comes by to tell Dielli it’s not her fault and Dielli wonders why she thinks D doesn’t know that?

#99 “Writing is all about perseverance.
…
But it’s also a matter of knowing when to quit.”

#101 (Just because we were talking about wallowing earlier in class.)
“Writers wallow in words like pigs in a mud puddle, and the dirtier we get, the happier we are.”
Yes, exactly.