My oldest daughter (14) has been helping read my WIP and giving me comments. Last night, she even gave me a couple of pages fully edited, with lines circled, a bunch crossed out, and a couple added in or with comments and question marks. I swear, it looked just like pages I got from my actual editor.

And then she told me things like, "it feels like you put that chapter in because you were trying to stick your two versions together. It doesn't really make sense there anymore." Is that intelligent or what? And also, "if you want people to care about the danger in the climax, you need to show better how those two characters are so close. Right now they don't feel very connected."

I asked her this morning what she thought of the ending. She tilted her head and said, "Hmm, what was the ending again?" I reminded her. She said, "That's kind of lame." Yeah, well working on it. Asked how she thought about it over all, if it was better than the last version, she said, "Well, it's on a better curve, but it's still at the beginning." I definitely need to pay her.