Changing My Story

At the moment I am going through the most painful part of the writing process: editing. I am trying to tweak my stories an extent that allows each story to reach its full potential and I'm having a very hard time of it. When you write something you get unbelievably attached to your story. For that reason I purposefully left my stories alone for months and years so I could have a level of detachment when it was time to edit. But many of my stories bring back memories when I read them and I find myself not wanting to change a thing though I remember how I stopped short on many of them simply because I was too lazy or didn't want to get too emotionally invested in some of them. Trying to fix and/or change them now is hurting! And so I procrastinate.

But I have only two weeks to finish edits and on the first of August I will be turning in the final version to be copyrighted. So I really can't keep procrastinating. A lot of things have changed about the book, from the title (it's last incarnation, hopefully) to some of the extras (I am seriously considering an introduction which I wasn't originally going to add) and I've really been attempting to get a collection of stories together that I really, really like. It's easy to start writing a story and love it but as the story takes shape it sometimes becomes something that has you on the fence. In addition, there are the times when it is simply emotionally draining to add any more to a story that hits close to home and I have confronted both of those issues.

I think too that I'm a bit scared. As the date for completion rears its ugly head I feel like nothing is ready. I want to throw everything I've written away and spend the next five years re-writing stories with full attention to detail. I know there are so many little issues that affect the way the stories will read when they are finished and I am not confident in my own abilities in some of those areas. It doesn't help that my two go-to editors are unavailable and I was really depending upon them for copy edits but I don't want to postpone the collection any longer.

So far I have a good idea of how the finished product will look. I am reconsidering the cover and I may go in a totally different direction from the original artwork I have for the cover. I want the artist to produce another painting if necessary, however, and I'm not sure how keen he is on that idea. I do know what stories will appear in this collection and I actually had to plan another collection of stories just to have an outlet for all of the stories I've written, many more than I thought I had.

Right now I'm just making finishing touches on the whole book as a concept and reworking the stories themselves. I spend my nights with my two highlighters, one for grammar and one for spelling, and I go through my stuff paragraph by paragraph. It's incredibly tedious but I want a collection I can be proud of. For that reason this week's blog is focused on my stuff; my attention has been on my own business and I really haven't paid much attention to the wider world. I will be happy when I can actually write about the various things that interest me in other arenas.

Check out the Lifestyle Simplicity blog tomorrow because there's a good post coming about poop. That's all I'm going to say in an effort to pique your interest in that blog (you can read it here). Also, there are some other news items about that whole movement that I will be announcing in the coming weeks. Mark your calenders because in two weeks on this blog I will be announcing that the final version has been sent to the copyright office, Insha'Allah. It's 4:30 AM and I need to do some edits so see ya next week or tomorrow on the other blog. Peace.