That magical quality of a story you have already written...does it scare you?

I just received AAs (Author Alterations) on my November Presents which is the second one in the duet The Sensational Stanton Sisters.

While I appreciate the chance to catch any errors that the copy editor and I could have missed, what I love about this activity is getting to read my own book after being away from it a few months. And whenever I struggle with a current WIP, which is almost always, reading through a book that I had already turned in, even the ones that are languishing on my hard drive, I have found is both encouraging and discouraging.

Encouraging because I know I got stuck before and I moved past it and discouraging….why?

Every time I read through something I have written, there are elements of the story that I recognize immediately- these have come from brainstorming before I began writing, or are a result of analyzing the story and realizing what was missing.

But there are also elements to the story that almost have a magical quality to them, as in they arrive in the story through no conscious effort, they just do. And almost always, it’s these particular elements that make the story memorable, that push it from being “not bad” to “wow, that was a satisfying love story.”

And reading back through something I have written and finding these magical elements, scares the hell out of me.

Will I find the magical quality again in the current WIP? Will my subconscious, or the well of creativity or that unknown, unnamed source from which these came, will it work again?

These questions scare me, and I tell myself I have to trust that it’s still there, that it will work again, that I have to push on. Something it comes in the first draft stage, sometimes in revisions, sometimes when I am reading through chapter 6 for the millionth time...I just have to trust that it will...

What about you? Do you find those magical elements in your story too or am I just being delusional? And if you do find them in something you have written, does it scare you to know wherever they came from, it’s not something you can control?