It's OK If Your Writing Is Crap

I've been a writer for a long time (more than 12 years actually), and I learned an important lesson today. And that is that if you look at something for too long, or too many times, eventually your eyes start to glaze over and you can't tell left from right or up from down. And then...well then you start fixing things that don't need to be fixed.

I've experienced this phenomenon in the past when I've worked on tough copywriting assignments, but in a slightly different way. On occasion I've worked on something for so long that I got to a point where I wanted to literally wring my own neck, poke my eyes out, and squirm out of my chair. Because I couldn't look at the words for one second longer.

In those situations I send it off for a new set of eyes and then jump from my chair, slam down the computer screen, and go do something else for a while.

But working on a book is so different. For one, it's way longer. So trying to read the work from beginning to end just doesn't happen in one sitting or in one day. This inherently makes the editing process much harder when you're looking at overall cohesiveness.

Until this week, in all of my copywriting days, I've never edited something so much that I started changing things back to the way they were before, or fixing things that maybe didn't need fixing, or started thinking the entire work was crap. When this began happening and then continued for two days in a row, I finally emailed my editor. She told me to close the file and send it to her. So I did.

I've often read about how writers will start to edit their work to death, nit-picking it apart until they've completely edited out the essence of what it was. And I didn't think that I'd do that sort of thing. I mean, I thought I'd be way more aware of my editing activities so that I could successfully avoid that pit. And then I found myself in it.

I'm glad she yanked me out.

So now? Now I sit and wait for her to read through my book and tell me if it's total crap, sorta crap, half crap, not too bad, promising, or pretty good. And I think under normal circumstances (or perhaps if I were still in my twenties) I'd be on pins and needles about this, biting my nails and compulsively hitting refresh in my email application. But I'm proud to say that I have a healthy detachment right now. Because I'm thinking:

• If it's mostly crap, I'll just rewrite the parts that are crap until it's not crap.
• If it's sorta crappy, then I'll have less to fix in order to get something that's not crap.
• If it's promising, then I'll be almost to the finish line and can rework the minor crap.
• If it's good, then I'll be satisfied that I don't have to do any additional work and can get it out the door.

The point to remember is that even if something is crap, it's not the end of the world. Eventually the finish line will be the same if you keep working at it: it'll get out the door. The whole "is it crap or isn't it crap" is more of a timeline, really. Because the first draft is certainly crap, isn't it?

"But wait," you say, "what about all those stories I abandoned years ago? Aren't they crap?"

Well, yes, they are. But they wouldn't be if you kept working on them. You stopped at the "this is still crap" point in the timeline. You could keep going if you wanted to.

Know what I mean, Vern?
(I'm channeling my inner Ernest P. Worrell.)

When You Finish Your Second Edit Of Your Book/Novel

So today was another achievement in my path to publication: I finished the second full edit of my manuscript. So what's a girl to do now? I mean am I done? Is it ready? Is it a masterpiece now?

No way!

What a girl's to do now is send it back to Fedex Office (which I did), have it printed out for the third time (yep), and begin round three of edits (tomorrow).

I hear so many people say that they want to write a book. But I think most of them don't realize the agony that is the writing process. Ok, I'm being a little dramatic, but it really is long and arduous and brain-breaking. Oh and yes, fun too. But the fun comes in between all that other stuff.

If you can somehow upchuck enough words to create a manuscript large enough to be called a book, you're one step ahead of most people. I'm happy that I'm finally in the "one step ahead of most people" category after two failed attempts over the past 8-9 years.

Now if you've gotten to where I am and are staring down at your edited piece of work, the question becomes this: Can you spend months or years editing your book so that it becomes something worthwhile? Can you hang? Can you keep on keepin' on? Can you slash and burn (text) when necessary?

I will say that I was surprised at the amount of editing my second iteration required. I thought it was closer. I thought the first round caught most of it.

Nope.

And this is exactly why you need multiple rounds, because it's never as good as you think it is. Not when you come back with fresh eyes. And I think that's the key - fresh eyes. And that's why you can't just rely on your own eyeballs to make an ultimate decision about how "good" your book is. Because by the time you get to round two and three and beyond, you're too close to it. You can't see the broken parts anymore. Heck, you can't see the awesome parts anymore either!

So I'll start my third round of edits tomorrow. I've printed out my book double-sided this time so that it'll read more like a book. It's bound nicely with coils and is currently sitting on my coffee table.

I've got about a week and a half to get through it with my red pen to meet my latest deadline with my editor. And then? I'll cross my fingers and hold on, and see if there's another round.

Cure For Writer's Block? Major Illness!

I've been sick for the last seven weeks, I've had two surgeries, and I've often found myself huddled in a black corner of my mind crying tears into a brown wooden bucket. It has sucked. But during that time something interesting happened: I found a cure for my writer's block.

Now I wouldn't recommend this cure for everyone. Because who wants to be sliced open multiple times, not be able to eat, not be able to move, and otherwise not be able to live any semblance of a normal life? But I think there are some lessons to be learned from the experience.

When you're going through a major illness and, as I so eloquently stated last week, you feel like you've "been hacked apart with an axe and stapled back together," you start to have some interesting conversations with yourself. They go something like this:

• "What if I don't get better?"
• "What if I don't live as long as I thought I would? What if I don't get as far as I thought I'd get?"
• "How could I be going along just fine and suddenly find myself bedridden and unable to live my life?"
• "Why am I so chicken shit about my writing? Or about anything, for that matter?"
• "I need to stop wasting time. I have wasted too much time."
• "Am I living the life I want to live? I'm close, but is close good enough?"

This is sort of what happened to me. It finally sunk in that I'm not in control of my existence on planet earth - I could be yanked out of it whenever the puppeteer decides my act is over. But what I can control is my performance while I'm here. What I can control is how much I let fear dictate my actions. And what I can control is what I decide to do with my time.

I wrote a lot in my twenties about how I felt like I had "stuff" (books, writing, whatever) inside of me, but that everything was stuck behind a three foot thick cement wall. I'd felt some cracks over the last 10 years - I mean I did finally finish a draft of a book - but nothing had truly shifted. I still didn't see myself able to formulate anything fictional that was worth reading.

But when I got so sick, that big cement wall fell through the floor. For the first time in my life I got out of my own way. Because it turns out, the cement wall is me. My mind. My fears. And I was just too tired and beaten down to be able to think or fear or...get in my own way.

In the middle of the night one night, about three weeks after my first surgery, I came up with a new character. I typed out the opening prose in the Notepad app on my iPhone, in the pitch black of my bedroom at 3:30 in the morning. When I read it the next day I was pretty happy with it. And excited. Because she felt real. She was interesting. She was going to have a story to tell, although I still don't know what that story is yet. But I can't wait to try to tell it.

As I continue to try to heal and get back to normal, I'm thankful for my new perspective on life. I don't want to spend energy criticizing myself, fearing things that may or may not happen, and stifling my writing ability. I know now that I don't have time to waste. And yes, we are all aware of this most of the time. But we really don't take it seriously until something serious happens. You know?