Where it hurts
Be warned, this is a bit of a rant:
I think I burnt out.
I have been spending around 14 hours a day for the last week (or two) trying to pound out and polish that draft of DH. I finally finished, printed the thing out, and now I can hardly stand to look at it. The hard part is done, I even thoroughly enjoyed the hard parts of the re-write (the manuscript ended at just above 95k words, but about 15k were brand new shiny words because I deleted a good deal and it was only 85k before.) What I have left a monkey could do. I just need to read the draft on paper to find the typing errors and keep an eye out for awkward sentences. But every time I sit down with the pages, my mind rebels and I can only make it through a few chapters at a time. I get easily distracted, what was funny before is boring now, the description is dull…all and all I want to burn the darn MS. (Which I can’t do because I told my agent I would have it in the mail in the next few days)
I think I’ve just looked at it too much. Since the beginning of the year I’ve read it from start to finish more times than I can count because I would have this great idea in the middle or near the end, then have to go back and make sure everything leading up to it worked.
This is why I usually put a story down between edits. I know, somewhere in the back of my head, that it can’t be as bad as I think it is right now. My agent liked the previous version, and I sent her a very detailed list of my revisions and she was excited about them, so it’s probably not terrible. (Though I suppose I’ll know once I send it out. Did you know today was a mail holiday? I didn’t until a couple days ago, but I was kind of happy, it gave me one more day to look everything over.)
Does anyone else absolutely hate their work from time to time? What do you do when that happens?
I think I burnt out.
I have been spending around 14 hours a day for the last week (or two) trying to pound out and polish that draft of DH. I finally finished, printed the thing out, and now I can hardly stand to look at it. The hard part is done, I even thoroughly enjoyed the hard parts of the re-write (the manuscript ended at just above 95k words, but about 15k were brand new shiny words because I deleted a good deal and it was only 85k before.) What I have left a monkey could do. I just need to read the draft on paper to find the typing errors and keep an eye out for awkward sentences. But every time I sit down with the pages, my mind rebels and I can only make it through a few chapters at a time. I get easily distracted, what was funny before is boring now, the description is dull…all and all I want to burn the darn MS. (Which I can’t do because I told my agent I would have it in the mail in the next few days)
I think I’ve just looked at it too much. Since the beginning of the year I’ve read it from start to finish more times than I can count because I would have this great idea in the middle or near the end, then have to go back and make sure everything leading up to it worked.
This is why I usually put a story down between edits. I know, somewhere in the back of my head, that it can’t be as bad as I think it is right now. My agent liked the previous version, and I sent her a very detailed list of my revisions and she was excited about them, so it’s probably not terrible. (Though I suppose I’ll know once I send it out. Did you know today was a mail holiday? I didn’t until a couple days ago, but I was kind of happy, it gave me one more day to look everything over.)
Does anyone else absolutely hate their work from time to time? What do you do when that happens?
Comments
I just got my line edit from my editor yesterday, so I got right to work. I wasn't feeling the love, though - I was so busy seeing flaws and problems that I ended up trying to fix things that he hadn't asked for. My husband would wander through the room now and then and whisper "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" just to keep me from going insane and completely rewriting everything.
* grin *
Good luck on your line edits!