Critiques are often painful, but from them comes the knowledge needed to make the story read better.

So I'm editing based on suggestions - some of them requiring a very thick skin.

Publishers automatically think newbie when they see a manuscript in first-person, but sometimes it works.  Eccentric characters - as in real life - often live for good or bad in the "I" mode.

And, middle-grade readers prefer it, over third person, because it allows them...

Horrible day.  The writer legends say to write, even when you don't feel like writing.  I better get started.