An itch I can't stop picking at

[breakinglight11]

I am absolutely obsessed with the desire to begin editing my new book. I finished the first draft of my “Adonis” novel on Monday, after kind of being kind of wishy-washy about it for about a year and a half, then working steadily and with focus on it for maybe the past six months.

I know it’s not good right now. While that’s totally okay for a first draft, it’s extremely difficult for me to know a piece of work with my name on it that means this much to me is currently this bad. I want to DO something about it, FIX it, TAKE ACTION in order to make it good. I know it’s going to need some serious editing work to get there, and I want to GET ON THAT. So much so I’m having a hard time thinking of anything else.

But right now, perhaps partially because I’m feeling so frantic about it, I know I don’t have the correct distance from it, neither emotional nor intellectual. By emotional distance, I need to have let go of how stressed and nervous I am about my ability to write prose up to the level I want for a project this precious to me. By intellectual, I need to get out of what I call “the design hole”— where you are so distracted by what you MEANT to say or accomplish with your artistic choices that you’re not in a great place to evaluate whether your choices actually DO say or accomplish those things.

The only way to get that necessary distance is to take time away from the project. I have not looked at the text since I finished it; actually, other than the stuff I was actively working with, I avoided going back and rereading anything in the last few weeks of work. My goal is, as much as possible, to forget what I actually wrote so when I go back to it I can evaluate it more objectively than if I’m just influenced by the emotions (mostly negative) I attached to it when initially generating it. But that takes time, and patience that has never been my strong suit.

It’s like having a wound that’s itching like mad. All I can think about it scratching it because it’s bugging me so much. But I know if I do, that will only make it worse; I’ve got to leave it alone to give it time to heal.

Based on past experience, when I return to my work after not having looked at it for a little while, it tends to not be “so much” of however I remember it. If I’m feeling really, really pleased, when I go back it tends not to quite live up to my memory. If I feel really bad about it, another look tends to seem not as bad as I thought. That’s honestly probably what will happen when I finally do start the edit. And since I’ve improved as a writer, I feel overall more positive about my writing in general. But that’s been in reference to my later, more polished dramatic work. I’m not at that point with my prose yet, so I imagine it will sort of revert to the older reaction pattern.

I marked the 29th of April as two weeks out from the completion date, as the very earliest I’m allowed to go back to it. Of course, by that point I’ll be into the final two weeks of production before the next Mrs. Hawking shows, Gilded Cages and Mrs. Frost on May 11th at the Watch City Steampunk Festival. So maybe I’ll be so busy then that I won’t have time to dig in, even if I want to. That might be a good thing, as it could force me to take even more time. I don’t want to lose momentum on it, but God knows right now I’m itching so hard to keep going on it that’s hard to imagine.