My Novel Almost Got Published. Now I’m Revising It Again.

INSIDE THE REVISION | NO. 1

summary

By Julie Tyler Ruiz, PhD

CONTENTS:

• I'm revising my novel—again
• What I shared (and didn't) about my novel
• Why I'm revising a novel that almost got published
• How I'm revising a key conflict in the novel
• How I used publisher feedback to rethink my novel
• Why I'm sharing my novel revision publicly
• The revision work ahead 

I'm revising my novel—again

I started writing Eating Mangoes in the Dark in August 2014, as I was transitioning out of academia and into the world of creative writing. This was before I became a book coach, before I created StoryBold, and before I had written anything substantial that was creative. I loved stories. I had a new Ph.D. in literature and experience conducting qualitative research. And I had an idea for a story i'd spend years developing into a novel.

Over the years that followed, I took that idea through countless major revisions. I worked with my own book coach. I pitched the manuscript to dozens of literary agents. Finally, in 2021, I received an offer of representation from an enthusiastic and insightful agent I'd met at a writing conference.

I got close to seeing my work in print.

But Eating Mangoes in the Dark didn't cross the finish line, and now, more than a decade after I first sat down to write it, I'm revising it again.

Returning to a manuscript after this long requires a particular kind of stamina. I was a different woman, a different writer, and a different creator in 2014. The book has changed with me. It contains not only the story I originally wanted to tell, but evidence of everything I've learned since then—about writing, about publishing, about myself, and about what this novel can become.

Right now, I am refining the vision for a book that has been in flux for years:

• I've reread the manuscript.
• I've reconsidered feedback from fellow writers, literary agents, and publishing house editors. 
• I've identified the places where I believe the story needs to change.
• I've begun imagining what those changes could look like.

The manuscript is good work. I believe in it. And I believe I can do justice to what I've learned and what I can now see in the story. By the end of the process, Eating Mangoes in the Dark will become something really special.

Now comes the part where I actually have to do it.

There is a lot of work ahead of me, and this time, I've decided to talk about that work while I'm doing it. I'm not waiting until the manuscript is polished, until I have a new agent, until I sign a publishing deal, or until I finally see the book on a shelf. I'm not waiting for some outcome that makes all these years look like a neat trajectory toward success.

I'm sharing the process while I'm still in it.

What I shared (and didn't) about my novel

For years, I occupied a public role as a book coach and writing teacher. Through StoryBold, I taught workshops and courses on how to write stories. I helped writers revise their manuscripts and navigate the long, uncertain process of writing a book. I've even helped two writers land traditional publishing deals.

That last part has been both deeply gratifying and humbling. I know what those writers put into their books, and I was genuinely thrilled to contribute to their success. At the same time, I couldn't miss the irony: writers I'd helped were crossing a finish line I still hadn't crossed myself. My own novel remained in revision.

I didn't exactly hide it. I talked about Eating Mangoes in the Dark in courses and workshops and occasionally on Instagram. I shared much more candidly with the writers in the Author Exchange, the writing group I run.

But I maintained a boundary.

At the time, that boundary was serviceable. I could concentrate on the two roles I occupied—the writer alone at her desk and the coach leading other writers—without adding the complexity of publicly documenting every aspect of my own process. 

There was probably some ego involved, too. I was comfortable sharing what I knew about writing. It was harder to lay bare a creative process filled with delays, setbacks, rejection, and uncertainty while occupying the role of an expert. I wanted to appear poised and capable, not perpetually stuck in the messy middle myself.

So I didn't document every setback, revision, submission, rejection, or moment of uncertainty as it happened. I could help other writers navigate that messy middle while keeping much of my own to myself.

I'm less interested in maintaining that distance now, partly because I've already crossed it. I wrote publicly about parting ways with my literary agent and my decision to return to this manuscript. 

But something else has changed, too. I no longer feel the same impulse to protect my authority from my vulnerability. If anything, I'm beginning to think there is more value in showing revision from the inside, not as a process I've mastered and can explain retrospectively, but as one I'm actively working through.

I don't feel that I have much to lose by letting you see that process now. I think there's quite a lot for all of us to gain.

Why I'm revising a novel that almost got published

Eating Mangoes in the Dark follows Emilie, a newly minted sociology Ph.D. who discovers she is pregnant just before her dissertation defense and begins miscarrying during it.

The loss, followed by the callous response of her narcissistic boyfriend, sends her life in a radically different direction. She leaves him, abandons a postdoctoral job offer, and moves to Miami, where she begins teaching at a community college and eventually falls in love with Michel, a financially secure Cuban American man whose warmth and vitality offer a startling contrast to the life she left behind.

I wrote the novel. Revised it. Signed with an agent. Revised it again. My agent submitted it to publishing houses.

It didn't get picked up.

One concern that emerged from editors involved Emilie's moral choices later in the novel.

In the original version, Emilie learns that Michel's past could make him a compelling subject for her sociological research. Driven by academic curiosity and ambition, as well as anxiety about her precarious financial situation, she pressures him to participate. Her eventual interpretation of his story is heavy-handed, Michel feels exploited, and their relationship falls apart.

Some editors had trouble getting past what Emilie's actions said about her. She was the protagonist readers were being asked to follow and root for. And yet, she was using someone she loved—and someone whose history placed him within a population that had already experienced vulnerability and trauma—to advance her own career.

I understood the concern. But Emilie's questionable behavior wasn't an accident:

• I wanted to explore the ethics of research: what happens when a scholar's intellectual curiosity collides with another person's right to his own story. 
• I wanted to explore what true love demands when ambition, insecurity, and self-interest enter the relationship. 
• I wanted Emilie to feel the internal pressure to succeed so intensely that she could make a choice she would later have to reckon with.

In other words, I never intended her to be admirable in every moment. I liked the original conflict precisely because it made her flawed ... and interesting.

But I also wasn't willing to protect one plot point at the expense of the entire novel's path to publication.

I could have dug in. Ego offered an easy response: They don't understand what I'm doing.

Artistry required something harder.

It required enough humility to consider that the editors might understand exactly what I was doing and still be showing me a place where the story could become stronger. I didn't have to abandon the questions I wanted the novel to ask. I could stay open to the possibility that there was another way to ask them.

Maybe even a better one.

How I'm revising a key conflict in my novel

In the version I'm writing now, Michel volunteers to participate in Emilie's study. He knows Emilie is struggling to establish her academic career, and his own history intersects with the questions she wants to explore. Becoming her research subject begins as an act of love and support.

That one decision changes the moral dynamics of everything that follows. More specifically:

• Michel volunteers instead of being pressured. He has more agency in the decision, and Emilie isn't beginning the research by knowingly crossing one of his boundaries.
• Emilie's motivations become less morally clear-cut. She's still ambitious, intellectually curious, and anxious about her career and finances, but she's accepting an opportunity Michel has willingly offered rather than exploiting his reluctance.
• Emilie's interpretations become more credible. Instead of imposing an obviously unfair reading on Michel's experiences, her research leads her toward conclusions about his past that may actually be accurate.
• Michel's objection shifts. He isn't simply angry because Emilie used him. He's confronted with an interpretation of his own life that he isn't prepared to accept.
• Their conflict becomes harder to resolve morally. Emilie may have seen something real, but does that give her the right to name it, analyze it, or make it part of her academic work?

That change immediately made me more excited about the novel.

The original version posed a relatively clear moral problem: What happens when ambition and insecurity lead you to exploit someone you love?

The new version is murkier.

What happens when someone invites you into his story and you see something there he doesn't want to see? Does insight give you the right to interpret another person's life? Where does intellectual inquiry end and intimacy begin?

Those questions bring me closer to what I now believe this novel is really about: who gets to interpret a life, what it means to truly belong, and whether two wounded people can know themselves well enough to love each other without turning the other person into an answer.

How I used publisher feedback to rethink my novel

After getting feedback from publishing house editors and eventually parting ways with my agent, I could have defended the original Emilie:

• Flawed protagonists are allowed to behave badly.
• People under financial and emotional pressure make questionable decisions.
• Fiction doesn't require its protagonists to be likable.

All of those things are true.

But revision asks a more useful question than Can I defend this choice?

It asks, Can I imagine a better one?

The publishing feedback pointed me toward a place in the manuscript where something wasn't landing. It didn't tell me what would land. That remained my responsibility as the writer.

So instead of treating the feedback as either an instruction I had to follow or a criticism I had to reject, I treated it as an invitation to brainstorm. I started looking for another way to create the conflict I needed without giving up the questions about ambition, research, ethics, intimacy, and self-knowledge that made the conflict important in the first place.

Eventually, I arrived at the version I'm working with now: Michel volunteers to participate in Emilie's research, and Emilie's analysis leads her toward conclusions about his past that may be accurate, but that he isn't prepared to face.

The solution doesn't make the story safer. It makes the conflict less clear-cut.

And I find that much more compelling.

That's the kind of discovery that makes revision worth doing: not changing a story simply because someone objected to it, but allowing feedback to push you beyond the choices you've already imagined.

Why I'm sharing my novel revision publicly

There is vulnerability in telling you all of this.

This novel has been part of my life for years. I got it remarkably close to publication. And after all that work, I'm opening the manuscript again and acknowledging publicly that it still isn't finished.

But I no longer think I need to cross the finish line before the process becomes worth talking about. In fact, I think there may be something more useful and interesting about sharing it while I don't yet know exactly how the book will turn out.

For writers

I hope there's value in seeing revision in real time, without hindsight smoothing everything out. You get to watch someone make decisions, test them, change her mind, get stuck, solve problems, and occasionally discover something better than what she originally imagined.

For readers

There's another kind of pleasure in journeying with me. You get to meet Emilie now. You get to glimpse Michel, the Miami she escapes into, and the story taking shape around them before Eating Mangoes in the Dark becomes whatever it will ultimately become.

Maybe you'll even become invested in this book before you can hold it in your hands.

That's what makes sharing the process feel worthwhile to me now. Instead of keeping the unfinished novel tucked away until I can present it as a finished success, I can let the work itself become part of the story.

The revision work ahead

I know more about this novel now than I did when I first wrote it. I know where some of its problems are. I can see possibilities I couldn't see before.

I also have a lot of work ahead of me.

That feels particularly daunting because of how long this book has already been in flux and because I've already experienced the strange ache of getting so close to publication without crossing the finish line. There are scenes to reconsider, character arcs to strengthen, new possibilities to test, and challenges I haven't discovered yet.

But the years I've spent with this book haven't diminished my belief in it. They've given me more to bring to it.

The story still feels alive to me. More than that, the changes I've begun making have made me excited about it again.

So I'm going back into the manuscript, not to prove that I had it right the first time, but to find out how much better I can make it.

I'll keep sharing what happens—the decisions, discoveries, problems, and breakthroughs—as I work my way through the revision.

This book isn't finished yet.

And this time, I'm letting you come with me.