Finally…

Finally, I’ve completed my first edit of my second novel, Sirens. I’ve been putting it off for months, considering I finished the first draft almost a year ago. It was difficult to get to it and my routine wasn’t as regimented as I would’ve liked, but I got it done.

After completing the first draft, I was excited. I let it sit for a few months as I usually do before getting to work on it so as to come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. However, when I came back to it, I felt overwhelmed. What if it was actually a piece of shit and all this time I’d spent writing it had been for nothing? What if it was trash and I had to scrap the whole thing? What if no one liked it?

While I still have those questions, I’ve at least gotten one step closer to completing the work. Who knows, people may hate it whenever they read it or they may love it, but I would never know unless I finished the damn thing. The next step is to send it to my editor so hopefully, the novel will be completed and ready for publishing in a few months if we’re looking at it optimistically. My editor could also tell me it’s a lost cause so who knows.

I’ve always worried about finishing a novel. I despise editing my own work. It’s not for me. It’d be much easier if I could simply send it to someone else and they figure it out for me but that’s not the case. Even Stephen King has to edit his own work up to a point. I never know if the story is done, if it could be improved upon, if I failed to cover something, missed great opportunities, or if I simply created some mediocre piece of crap that will only be in my family members libraries.

There are too many uncertainties and while I know the only way I’m going to get better at writing is by writing, it’s still difficult to know if you’re getting better at something like writing unless someone from the outside looking in is telling you so. I have much to improve upon, that I know for certain. I must take it one day at a time, one work at a time, and one word at a time. One thing I’ve come to find about myself is once I complete a work like this, I look at writing in a fresh light because where I was once constantly thinking about finishing a story and felt like I was cheating on it any time I worked on something else, I have only an obligation to writing something the next morning. That’s it. It’s like becoming free after being held by one overwhelming obligation. There’s more to come, that I know for sure.