I’m still editing. In fact, it’s going much slower than I want and I’m not sure if it’s the book or just me. Chapters 1–4 went well, and then I reached chapter 5.
I had to step away for a while. In fact, I stayed away all night.
I thought that had to be as bad as it could get, and then I read chapter 6. That was tough, but then halfway through, things got better, and then worse. Chapter 7 came and oh my.
Now chapter 5 isn’t the worst, not by a long shot. Chapter 7 is.
I don’t even want to start chapter 8. I’ve just about lost all my motivation to read this thing. What should have taken two hours tops has taken two days—and I haven’t even made the edits. That’s just the reading, and the avoidance of reading, and a few typo corrections.
I think I’ve done this before. But I’m not actually sure. On the one hand, I feel like maybe it’s not as bad as all that, and I’m just really not in the right head space for this edit. And then I think, nope, I’ve been worried about this book all along, I’ve had major trouble writing it, and maybe there was a reason for all that.
Gah. The sad part is chapters 1–2 were just fantastic. The last two paragraphs of chapter 7 were fantastic. I really liked them.
Everything else sucks.
All I’m doing at this point is planning to get in there and fix some stuff in a way I usually don’t do after I’m done. It’s not that the writing is horrible (it ain’t great in places, for sure, but not horrible). It’s that there are just gaps—honestly some of it just doesn’t even make sense.
But some of it is really good. I mean it. It’s a totally weird thing that I don’t think I’ve seen happen before, like I was writing with a split writer personality, one experienced and one just learning to put sentences together to make paragraphs.
I really don’t think I did enough of the kind of editing I usually do when I’m writing. (Going back through to tighten, add, smooth, and make sure I actually said what I thought I said… it’s hard to explain. I have to do that as part of the writing and I don’t call it editing. It’s just part of the writing and how I get what’s in my head onto the page. I don’t even know. I’m really worried, that’s all I can say right now. Really, really worried.)
On the other hand, I’m feeling hypercritical right now, so who knows? Maybe it isn’t as bad as all that.
Back to it, I guess, or I’ll never get to move on. I definitely want to put this one behind me.