Joined
·
285 Posts
I'm working through the last(or second to last) readthrough of my next novel. It's technically the first one I wrote. I published a different one first, because it was closest to done.
This one has required so much work to get it to a point I'm happy with, and having mostly positive reviews on my other novel has just made it harder to look at this one. It's a little paralyzing.
My wife(and primary beta reader and editor) is trying to talk me into letting go of some of the control of it. She says I can dither over the story for years, without finding or fixing any noticeable flaws. She says I already have. (I wrote this one 3 or 4 years ago.) She says I'm just worrying myself because it's so different from the first novel, but that I'll be hurting myself, and hurting it if I continue to look for reasons not to finish it. She wants me to call this draft it... Let her give it one last edit, make sure I haven't introduced new errors, but to not do another full rewrite, just spot-corrections where she sees issues.
I've redone the cover for my first novel, and have been trying to focus on everything but finishing this draft of this one, because I know we'll have to decide how much work I have left on it. The new cover looks good, the other stuff needed to be done, but I'm sure it can't be good to draw this out. I need to either decide whether to set this project aside and pick another one I'm more confident in to follow my first book with, or to decide that this anxiety is just my own insecurity, because I've had reasons to procrastinate on being an "author" for so long, and can't do that any more.
Letting go of the first one was not anywhere NEAR this hard. I sincerely hope that this'll stop by the time I'm ready to release 3 and 4 for the world. Does it?
This one has required so much work to get it to a point I'm happy with, and having mostly positive reviews on my other novel has just made it harder to look at this one. It's a little paralyzing.
My wife(and primary beta reader and editor) is trying to talk me into letting go of some of the control of it. She says I can dither over the story for years, without finding or fixing any noticeable flaws. She says I already have. (I wrote this one 3 or 4 years ago.) She says I'm just worrying myself because it's so different from the first novel, but that I'll be hurting myself, and hurting it if I continue to look for reasons not to finish it. She wants me to call this draft it... Let her give it one last edit, make sure I haven't introduced new errors, but to not do another full rewrite, just spot-corrections where she sees issues.
I've redone the cover for my first novel, and have been trying to focus on everything but finishing this draft of this one, because I know we'll have to decide how much work I have left on it. The new cover looks good, the other stuff needed to be done, but I'm sure it can't be good to draw this out. I need to either decide whether to set this project aside and pick another one I'm more confident in to follow my first book with, or to decide that this anxiety is just my own insecurity, because I've had reasons to procrastinate on being an "author" for so long, and can't do that any more.
Letting go of the first one was not anywhere NEAR this hard. I sincerely hope that this'll stop by the time I'm ready to release 3 and 4 for the world. Does it?