Are we there yet?

It's a big moment here at Rosoff acres.  I've just printed out the latest draft of There Is No Dog, and I'm hoping against hope that this one actually works. But I won't know until I read it. If you're not a writer, that probably sounds strange.

How can I not know whether it works or not? I wrote it, after all.  But each draft involves endless invisible weaving (remember that thing old fashioned tailors used to charge a fortune to do?  Usually after you burned a cigarette hole in a really expensive jacket). And I don't always weave in chronological order. Sometimes it's a chapter here and a chapter there, or in this case, a whole plot line that's been taken out, a new important character put in, new dialogue, and a completely different ending.

What I'm looking for is a draft that reads as if someone else wrote it -- in other words, like a proper book.  I don't expect I'm quite at that point, but there have been so many problems up till now that if the plot works from beginning to end, I'll open champagne.  Metaphorically speaking of course.

Fingers very crossed.

p.s.  Just to prove once and for all that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, some acknowledgments:  I would like to thank my editor (Elv Moody), my American agent (Zoe Pagnamenta), and most particularly, my famous writer friend, Sally Gardner, without whom this draft would still be the hideous mess it was two weeks ago.  And two weeks before that.  Etc.