Damn it, man, my head is spinning again. All this time at home, working, writing, being in familial surroundings, and everything is fine. Then I get down here to The Undisclosed Location, and my head feels like it wants to come off.
Week 3 of the New Job, and it feels like slow death. But I’m dealing. The drive down was okay, with very little traffic the whole way. Got set up and realized I’d forgotten the charger for my phone, so I might have limited coverage this week–isn’t that a shame?
The dance that is Couples Dance is coming to a close. Yesterday I managed to roll out about 2,100 words, and Chapter 8 is just about done. Done as in later today I’ll finish it and move onward to the Penultimate Chapter and get some really strange things going–as if what I’m doing now isn’t strange enough. For a story on erotica, this has its moment, but it also is . . . to be honest, the stuff I just wrote will probably turn a lot of people off. Which is okay, because not all erotica is going to be your thing. I know what I laid out last night isn’t my thing; not sure if it’s anyone’s thing.
Quit teasing, okay? Okay.
When I think about what I want to do with my old novel, Transporting, there is something inside that starts doing backflips. But not the good kind. It’s more like the sort of backflip your stomach does when it wants to rebel against what your mind is saying will be a good thing. I get that way; I see something as being impossible to do, and I don’t do it. Self-perpetuating prophesy and all that, you know?
Let’s face it: no one likes to edit. Well, maybe a few people, but most writers seem to loath it. And most writers do it only because they have to, otherwise you come off looking like a total dork when you put your stuff out there for all to see. Self-publishing has force us to become better editors, but as with everything, there are some people who are really good at it, and others who suck the air right out of the sky.
As was with my story, Kuntilanak. I worked on it, and had Trusty Editortm checking it over it with me. And they went over it again before I put it up for sale. And then . . .
Someone comes along and finds a whole lotta trouble with it.
I ended up spending a couple of days rereading the whole story, finding mistakes, and I reedited the manuscript before resubmitting it for download. It taught me a lesson to give my manuscript a damn good looking-over, but I didn’t feel good about what happened–and it makes me wary of what’s going to happen in the future, because I don’t want that nightmare to happen again.
Which makes the tummy turn backflips, because Kuntilanak was only 24,600 words long; Transporting is over 250,000. It’s also unfinished, which means before it’s all over, I could be looking at 275,000 words of story that need to be made pretty.
Well, hell: you just gotta do this. It’s like my “real” job: you gotta do it, even when your head is spinning and you want another couple of hours in bed. It’s all gonna make your head spin, and whether or not like can deal with it is the real question. And only you can answer that one.
How you take the answer is going to determine if you get to editing that manuscript, or if you’re gonna let your head keep on spinning and have it ruin your day.
