You're in Revision Purgatory. It's scary here, your momentum stalls. It's a seemingly impossible feat. There's fear, loneliness and a crisis of confidence.
I worry that I won't be able to put it right; that this slashed, cut and pasted version which was once my manuscript will ever look like one again.
I stopped while it was in my CP's hands and read some refresher courses on POV, scene development, and decription and now I see glaring inconsistencies, plot problems and POV slides.
Why did I do that? Well, I did commit to making it - to use an Army slogan - be all it can be at this stage in my career. So better now than later after I've submitted it to a publisher or agent.
I know I'm capable of better, so until I'm satisfied that it's my best effort I won't cut corners. I'll keep my eye on the goal, of being published, not each painful step along the way.
I see my book with my name printed across the binding. A customer taking it from the shelf, reading the back cover with a smile, tucking it under her arm and walking to the register.
While I tackle the excruciating grunt work, I remind myself again to trust the process and believe.
1 comment:
LOL - we're at the same point in our concerns.
And then you start looking at your ms and start wondering if you're 'over-working' and people will say it's sterile and in editing the ms you've cut out the part that makes it you. So how do you know when you've reached that point?
And you read other books by the smaller publishers you're planning to target and think "Holy Cr*p, this is good, yet the big guys didn't buy this?"
Yeah, fear is a de-motivator. But each edit is a learning process. Time to pull out Margie's Defeat Self-defeating Behaviors course and rethink our own patterns, I guess.
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