It’s working!

I’ve started editing Barska, like I should have been doing all along.

Granted, I had to get Blue Moon and the conclusion to Barnacles an Pineapples posted first, but the clean slate does indeed seem to be working.

Afraid of Editing

I think I just have a mental block when it comes to editing. I avoid it with the skill of a virtuoso. I can’t possibly edit now. There’s laundry to be done! Or things to be dusted, or a cat to be petted. A whole host of unexpected and yet slightly important tasks unfolds before me.

It’s that way with Barska, and it’s been that way with my other writing projects as well – it only takes me a day to write the installments, but it sometimes takes two weeks to get it edited.

Why?

I think it’s lack of self-confidence. What works, what doesn’t?

I’ve managed to find a headspace that allows me to be free when I’m composing new writing. I allow myself to just write.

But once I hit editing, I freeze up. The options are dizzying. Should this line be phrased this way or that way? Should I cut this piece of the conversation? Would it make more sense if I started the chapter sooner, or later?

The problems with “show, don’t tell” and the disconnect between what I see in my head and what I actually wrote are getting easier for me to see and fix (especially if I let the writing rest for two days before I look at it again).

But the other problems – the decisions about what content to cut and what content to expand on. The questions about pacing, or plotting – the little things that can lose an audience – those are driving me crazy.

It helps to read the writing out loud (I find a lot of phrasing problems that way), but I feel incredibly inept when it comes to making the big decisions about editing on a larger scale.

This, Too, Shall Pass

I know this is a phase, and I know that I’m worrying too much over it. Knowing and changing emotional reactions to things based on that knowledge are two totally different things, though.

In the meantime, I really need to get back to editing. SOMETHING is better than nothing. Perfection should never be my goal.