Consulting a creative guru

I mentioned a couple days ago that I have to reimagine a character that love in order to move forward with this revision of my manuscript. I also need to identify how the antagonist is defeated (the original way was too complicated and not that great anyway). Finally, I need to up the stakes for my second POV (point of view) character in the third quarter of the story.

The problem is I don't know the answers to these questions yet. I'm stuck. I feel like I've been kicked out of my own story and it's all gone hazy.

This is usually the moment where I panic that I'm not making enough forward momentum. That I've already spent too long on this manuscript. I'll probably tell myself I'm a hack, that I can't do this, that I should probably give up.

I need a creative guru. Where's Bowie? Oh, here he is...

He gets right at the nerve of something I'm wrestling with. I don't fancy myself a literary writer or a great artist. I want to write fun, thoughtful stuff that speaks to me and that might also appeal to a segment of fiction readers who enjoy slightly dark, slightly fantastical teen stories. That said, the whole point of revising is to take my initial vision and clarify it, clean it, make it's heart shine for readers, which means taking feedback, making changes, doing hard stuff like "killing darlings." But it also means that I can't let selling this book derail me from my story vision. 

What I'm afraid of is losing what I love about this story by making the necessary changes. So, the work is to fall in love again. To rediscover the soul of what I love and find most important in the story, and then work from that. And if I need a little space for that process of discovery, that's okay. 

This is my story. I can write it with all the intensity, absurdity, passion, naivete I feel. And if that scares me, if it makes me feel like I'm in too deep, good. I'm in the right place.