Talk about discouraged.  I took the first chapter of the book I have written to an editor who is also a professor of English.  He hated it.  He told me that the first sentence should state the problem, or the crisis, that the book intends to solve.  That there had to be dramatic emotion in the first paragraph for someone to continue to read.  After he read the first sentence, he said that if he had picked it up to read, he wouldn't have gone any further.  That he would have watched a ball game on TV instead.
He didn't have anything positive to say.

I read the first two chapters over the phone to Scott, and he told me, "Mom, you can write.  Don't let some knucklehead get you down."  He also said, "Take it to a woman editor."  And then he said, "I get it.  I was raised by women.  I understand how they think."  He was referring to the fact that until he was four, Ken was deployed most of the time and Pat, Becky and I were the only family he had.

I will pick myself up and find an editor that is interested in my subject matter.  When you write, your copy is like your baby.  You want everyone to say, "What a pretty child," even though it may be the ugliest kid you ever saw.  But you have to be aware that some people don't like kids.  Period.  And some editors are going to hate what you write from the git-go.

I know that will be true about what I write, and am ready to change what needs to be changed.  I just want someone to point me in the right direction and give me some constructive help.  "I hate it," isn't constructive.  I like the first chapter.  I have no idea how I would change it.  I guess that is what is important.  Being happy with what you have written.

I edit what I write (to all of you out there) three or four times until I have said what I want to say--and said it the way I want to say it.

It is now 24 hours later.  I went to the class on publishing and the lady speaker for the evening was the editor of a publishing company.  She liked what I had written, and took the first three chapters with her when the evening was over.  So I am now out of the dumps.

Maybe Scott was right.