I Hate Editing
There, I said it.
I hate editing. I always have. I always will.
Going through school, I would write my papers with care, taking time to edit as I went along. That way, when I reached the end of the paper, all I usually had to do was go through to fix punctuation or grammatical errors as I caught them. That's all it took to earn me As on papers in school.
When it comes to fiction, though, there obviously needs to be more to it than that, and it's harder than hell for me. When I rip that original idea apart, it's almost as if some of the story's magic dies. It's nothing that I can accurately explain, but I imagine (not that I have my own to make a true comparison) that it might be like having to admit the faults of your own children. You know they exist because they're human, after all, but you love them so unconditionally that drawing attention to those little 'faults' feels awful and unnatural. (I apologize if this was a terrible comparison.)
That's why editing my fiction is hard for me. I don't mind going through to clean up sentences, change words around, make things more precise. That's not the kind of editing I'm talking about. What I'm referring to is exactly what I need to continue doing with The Man, and I just haven't bring myself to be able to do it for the longest time.
I'm not sure that critique group was good for me. The actual critiques that I got were phenomenal, and I loved reading everyone else's novels and giving them feedback. What wasn't good for me was the repeated editing. I made too many changes too quickly. I spent so much time doing rounds of edits that could have been condensed, over-thinking passages that were fine after all, and not paying attention to the things that were much more glaringly awkward or just plain wrong. Now that I've had some distance, I can see all of this, and it has made me so frustrated that every time I open the enormous Word doc, all I want to do is cry.
In order for this novel to be what I know it can be, I need to rework a huge central plot line. It will be messy and time-consuming, but it is what needs to be done. If only I could get up the guts to dive in headfirst.
I'm scared. I'm terrified of spending all this time and realizing once again that it still isn't right, that I've wasted countless more hours on a still unfinished product. I'm willing to put in whatever time is necessary to complete this novel, but I'm tired of doing it incorrectly. This isn't one of my excuses, it's just the truth.
That's why I've been procrastinating. That's why I've been absent. I'm so excited to be starting NaNo soon, but last year's novel keeps calling out to me from the deep recesses of my hard drive wanting to know why I've been ignoring it for so long.
Here's to hoping that I muster up some courage between now and November 1st.
I hate editing. I always have. I always will.
Going through school, I would write my papers with care, taking time to edit as I went along. That way, when I reached the end of the paper, all I usually had to do was go through to fix punctuation or grammatical errors as I caught them. That's all it took to earn me As on papers in school.
When it comes to fiction, though, there obviously needs to be more to it than that, and it's harder than hell for me. When I rip that original idea apart, it's almost as if some of the story's magic dies. It's nothing that I can accurately explain, but I imagine (not that I have my own to make a true comparison) that it might be like having to admit the faults of your own children. You know they exist because they're human, after all, but you love them so unconditionally that drawing attention to those little 'faults' feels awful and unnatural. (I apologize if this was a terrible comparison.)
That's why editing my fiction is hard for me. I don't mind going through to clean up sentences, change words around, make things more precise. That's not the kind of editing I'm talking about. What I'm referring to is exactly what I need to continue doing with The Man, and I just haven't bring myself to be able to do it for the longest time.
I'm not sure that critique group was good for me. The actual critiques that I got were phenomenal, and I loved reading everyone else's novels and giving them feedback. What wasn't good for me was the repeated editing. I made too many changes too quickly. I spent so much time doing rounds of edits that could have been condensed, over-thinking passages that were fine after all, and not paying attention to the things that were much more glaringly awkward or just plain wrong. Now that I've had some distance, I can see all of this, and it has made me so frustrated that every time I open the enormous Word doc, all I want to do is cry.
In order for this novel to be what I know it can be, I need to rework a huge central plot line. It will be messy and time-consuming, but it is what needs to be done. If only I could get up the guts to dive in headfirst.
I'm scared. I'm terrified of spending all this time and realizing once again that it still isn't right, that I've wasted countless more hours on a still unfinished product. I'm willing to put in whatever time is necessary to complete this novel, but I'm tired of doing it incorrectly. This isn't one of my excuses, it's just the truth.
That's why I've been procrastinating. That's why I've been absent. I'm so excited to be starting NaNo soon, but last year's novel keeps calling out to me from the deep recesses of my hard drive wanting to know why I've been ignoring it for so long.
Here's to hoping that I muster up some courage between now and November 1st.