It occurs to me that I shouldn't have said it was the "manuscript that will not die."  I don't, of course, want my manuscripts to die.  It should have been called the "manuscript that keeps threatening to die."  I had to do major surgery on it, after having another manuscript die on the publisher's table.  After removing and transplanting most of this one's vital organs, including excising some of its intestines, I realized the organs I was trying to transplant were not a match.  As a result, major rejection occurred, it had heart failure, and it was for a long time on life-support.

Or so I thought.  It seems it's not brain-dead, but was only in a temporary coma; with the right treatment and therapy, it should recover to full health, at least according to my critique group, that valiant team of word surgeons.  The heart is still good, thank God.

It gave my own heart an infusion of hope; it seems the heart of a story is intricately linked to that of the author.  A crisis of confidence cuts to the quick and severs the gut, and creativity then is on the scalpel's edge of life and death.  Approaching the editing task seems fraught with danger:  a wrong cut could mean poison spreading through the belly of the story.

For a long time, I stared at it, too scared to make any more cuts for fear it would die entirely (can a story die from a thousand cuts?  Can it live?), or at best turn into a patchwork creature, much like the Frankenstein monster.  A good heart would not matter in that case:  Everyone ran from the monster, after all, and didn't care it only wished to love and be loved.  It's necessary, these days, to have a pretty face as well.

But the heart is solid, and that is vital.  Life-blood flows from that core, and without it, not all the plastic surgery in the world would fix it.  Or, it would, but I would rather have a living story with a good heart, than a dead one with a pretty face.

So, for now, I have hope.  The story's heart is pumping well, it lives, and I am good at making small, neat, almost invisible sutures.  With luck, the story will heal well, and even thrive.