Tuesday, September 18, 2012

PUT THE MANUSCRIPT DOWN AND STOP EDITING ALREADY.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I yell that? I didn't mean to yell that. Well, maybe just yell it in my head. A little. Okay yeah I meant to yell that.

I'm in the middle of writerly self-doubt, brought on by "too much editing". You probably know how it is:  you get so in the editing "zone" that you keep finding fault after fault after "OMG THIS MUST CHANGE ARGH". Worst of all, you've read your words so many times that they've completely lost meaning and are no longer decent, but the swill of the universe. You know. That epic self doubt that says "you suck light it all on fire."

Thus, I've promised myself  that this is THE LAST edit/read through I'm doing of "DAISUKI." After that, no more. Beyond checking stuff for formatting, this will be my last fiddle before it goes live. I've convinced myself I'm doing the right thing. There is such a thing as "over editing". Since the first edit I did (which is mostly just removing typos / glaring errors) I've taken off 5k, mostly stupid info dumps and cutting out clunky prepositional phrases if not whole lines.It's the same exact story, just...cleaner? But of course it'll never be clean enough for me. It's that moment when you realize what other authors really mean when they say they're never happy with the product.

But no. I swear. This is the last read through. THE LAST. LAST I SAY.

Stop me before I commit every  word to memory.

1 comment:

  1. *drops the scissors and backs away*

    That is great advice! You have a reach a point where you stop editing and love your story for what it is. :)

    ReplyDelete

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