This is the last time. This is definitely it. This has to be the end. Some say when you start changing things back and forth, you’re done. I’m far beyond that. Big problem: I still only have about 35000 words, a novella, not a novel. I keep adding things. Then I have to let the addition age and then go back and edit it. Does the addition feel just stuck there? Probably. And don’t I need to revisit that addition later in the novel? Well, yes. Okay, where? It’ll come to me when I get there. You see the problem.
The solution? Acceptance. It’s a novella. Acceptance. It won’t be perfect. Acceptance. I still have a professional edit and beta readers to go. If I think editing is hard now, just wait until after other humans see it. Then will I be in the same boat—forever editing the damn thing? No! I won’t allow it! Still, it won’t be easy.
Just do it!? Force doesn’t work for me—with exercise, yes—with writing and editing—no. I have too much emotional involvement, I suppose. I want it to be good, but I don’t think it is. I have lots of ideas about how to fix the novella, but far from an enhancement, each addition seems like another malignant growth that the story has developed.
I’ve stolen ideas from my next novella, 40,000 words of which has been drafted. Will I ever get to it, let alone finish it? Not to mention novel three, which is partly drafted, or novel four, which is percolating in my mind. And, to make matters worse, it’s not as though I’m 35 or something. No, I’m 74. Yes, seventy-f’ing-four.
I’d better get moving, that’s what I know. How? Putting it on my calendar helps. Just butt-in-the-chair helps. Sprints help. Daydreaming helps. I’ve had deadlines, but for some reason meeting them—or even coming close—is beyond me. I have to plug away and insist that this is the last f-ing edit and send the manuscript out. That’s the only way to do it—just do it.
Image by Graphic Artist Art Grabitees
