It’s hard not beating myself up. I just went back and re-read some old blog posts, on a previous site of mine, and one of the posts was about whittling down my goals to just two. My logic (in this post) was that if I have just two they’d be easier to achieve and I would therefore feel as though I could actually accomplish something. The first of the two was, of course, weightloss, as that has become my forever journey. I have struggled with my weight since I was a kid and I probably will fight it until I die. It’s what I get for having an unhealthy apetite for sugar and a pension for overindulgence.

The second was to finish editing my book. At the time of the post, it had been only 5 years since I had finished my first novel length work of fiction. As of December 6th, 2020, it has been 11. Shoot me.

I do find it funny that I whitled this “list” down to the most daunting of all of them. I’m curious what the others could have possibly been, that these were the “easy” ones.

Much like my weightloss, I think my journey to finish editing my novel will be my white whale. I will sail the seas of my emotional instability until I can finally capture the “perfect” manuscript. Per usual pattern, I tried (once again) to wrok on it and I have become so saturated with that fucking opening scene that I don’t know if my dislike of it is my own irritation or if it is just genuinely a bad beginning. Considering I gave it to my husband’s boyfriend to read and he’s only two pages in… I’m going to assume it’s just bad. I’ve edited it countless times, it merely resembles the original one I wrote 11 years ago. For the better. And for the worst. Even if I wanted to writea new opening scene, I have read through the exiting one so many times the new draft would end up sounding exactly the same, starting in the same spot, and most likely carry the same bullshit and baggage of the previous drafts. God I hreally ate myself sometimes.

The problem with being a perfectionist is that I get so caught up in the “it’s not good enough” that I have wedged out the part of me that can identify what is and isn’t good writing. I fucking hate it. And myself.

The other thought that I have is that maybe my story just isn’t good and I’ve led myself to believe that it is. I had liked it when I first finished it, but now… I’ve changed so many things in my head or in the actual manuscript that I feel like it’s a mess. I’ve tried justifying or rationalizing charatcer choices and shoehorned other elements that it feels like frankenstein’s monster. (Ugh, enough with the metaphors, Josh.)

Part of me kind of wants to make a new outline, with the story elements, and do another NaNoWriMo style re-write of it. Worst case scenario, it’s as shitty as the one prior. Best case scenario… It’s better.

Yet even as I think of this I get lost in the technical aspect. Do I want to write it in first person, since it’s a young adult/new adult series and what I have discovered about the better selling series are typically those of the main character’s perspective. I don’t even know if my character’s personal voice is strong enough to carry an entire narrative… and if i feel that way now, doesn’t that lead me to believe that it’s weak? FUCK!

As you can clearly see, I tend to overthink and overanalyze things. It’s my blessing and my curse. Primarily, curse.