Ranty McRant
Please ignore the whining.
I’m having a terrible time editing this damn novel. It’s sad really. I want to burn it, delete it, throw it far far away. Unfortunately, I know it would sling back around like a bad joke to smack me in the face. One of the reasons it’s being such a pain in my ass is that the ‘fixes’ for it are actually pretty obvious but super time consuming. I’m pulling parts that didn’t make sense before together, which requires pages and pages of completely fresh material. I’m revamping the science and making it less fly by seat of pants (or seat of wikipedia), and I’m inserting a great deal more character interaction and hopefully motivation. I’m brimming with ideas about it. Ideas are never the issue.
Basically, I feel like a person who buys an old fixer-upper house and then sinks 10 years of time and money and effort to make it beautiful. I don’t want to find out my lovely house isn’t worth what I’ve paid for it. I’ve said before that I sort of hate this novel. It was a dare, a bit of a joke. But I also know that I’m often my own worst critic. I know that there are things worth exploring at least in this novel. I can see the possibilities in the ragged and ugly bones of my tale.
But the doubts linger. Would this time be better spent writing one or both of the other novels I’m working on this year? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ll ever really know. I do know that I would love to just have this damn thing done already. Not to overuse a literary convention, but this novel is fast becoming my writing albatross. I know I need to just suck it up and git’er done. If only things were so easy.
In other news, no word yet about that job. I’m still on the fence. Meanwhile, I’ll just keep plugging away at the writing. Now if only I could banish thoughts of my Civil War Witches novel from my brain. That novel is at least a year or two away from being written. Grr.
Alright, /endrant.
