It’s almost exactly two months since I finished my first draft. Two months and four days, to be exact. I decided to post an update for two reasons: 1) to update my blog, and 2) to shame myself into getting my shit together and starting my edits again.
I haven’t edited in about two weeks. I have plenty of lovely excuses ready to justify WHY I haven’t edited in two weeks, but they’re all rubbish. The only one that has any truth to it is that my boyfriend had appendix surgery and I abandoned my edits to take care of him. But I was only gone about four or five days before I was back home again. What about the week after that, Mary? What about this past month? What about it, indeed. I should have been editing but fear of failure – once again – has held me back.
I constantly change my mind about my work; after one editing session I’ll think it’s good, and after another I’ll think it’s not good enough to wrap chips in. I know I shouldn’t judge it until I’ve edited the whole thing, but it’s hard. It’s hard to see awkward sentences and repeated words and dull prose and still convince yourself that there’s a gem in there somewhere, hiding under all that rough. I know I have to keep at it – and I will – but I’ll be on this rollercoaster for a while.
So far, I’ve edited a full twelve chapters. To be fair, they were quite tough chapters to slog through because of pacing and plot problems. They amount to about 30k words or so, but I have around 60k to go, so it’s not much of a dent. Still, that’s 30k of a second draft DONE. And they’re not bad words! They’ll still need polishing in the third draft, but I could probably stand to let someone read them without passing out.
What I really need is a schedule that I’ll stick to. But following it religiously is the hard part; I could spend an entire day putting one together using stickers and colour coding, but I’d probably ignore it. Or I’d go with it for a while, miss a day – which I’d justify somehow – and then tumble down a spiral of missed deadlines and excuses.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but I’m a trained journalist. When it comes to news articles and opinion pieces and advertorial, I’m on the ball. I submit my content ON TIME and I always have. But when it comes to my creative writing and, more specifically, this novel… it’s like my work ethic and time management skills run away together, dragging my self-confidence with them.
I think this anomaly is because I care about this novel more than anything I’ve ever done and I desperately want to get it right. If an article isn’t well received or if it’s not the best work I’ve ever put my name to then that’s okay, because although I like journalism, it isn’t my dream. It’s not what I spent hours day-dreaming about in school. I didn’t want to be Veronica Guerin, I wanted to be JK Rowling.
But knowing why I do something doesn’t make modifying my behaviour any easier. Writing it here, however, holds me accountable to myself. I couldn’t look back on this post in another two months with just another few thousands words under my belt. I’d be too ashamed at my lack of progress. So whether I believe in myself and my writing or not, I HAVE TO edit, because nobody is going to do it for me.
This is all on me. And I’m not going to let myself down.
Word Wood 