For a while there, I was doing pretty well at this life thing. I got my planner out every day so I knew when things were due. I worked on my homework every night, and I started projects early so I could be sure of meeting the deadline.
Then a story fought me, like no story in a very long time has. And I couldn’t do what I usually do, which is to throw my arms up and let it win, come sneaking back at it a few months or years down the road and bash it when it wasn’t looking—no, this story had to be done on deadline.
I had to fight, and I did. I beat on that thing with every weapon in my arsenal. Freewrites, plot sheets, character development, dark chocolate, Kahlua… Eventually I won. Bruised and bloodied, I emerged victorious. I wrote the story. Not quite on deadline, but close. And in the meantime I went to work, and I turned my homework in, and life went on.
However. I have a great dislike for missing deadlines. Next time, I decided, I would start even earlier. Like, as soon as the recalcitrant story was out of my hands, I pulled out the next work and started editing.
…started…editing…
…started…
Yeah, it didn’t work like that. I dithered. Should I toss this scene or fix it? What about the next one? If I toss this one, what should I write to replace it? What if I kept this one, but tossed the rest of the story? Too drastic, but I could just do an onscreen rewrite, fixing the writing before I went after the plot, but that would be like cleaning carpeting before I tore it up to remodel…
It doesn’t matter why I didn’t get anywhere. What matters is that for two weeks I didn’t get anywhere. Two weeks! I was getting desperate. Then came last weekend.
One of my classes, being an eight-week course, finished last week. My kid had plans to go camping for the weekend. My roommate was going to be here, but she’s very quiet and supportive of writing endeavors.
At last! I thought. I am going to knock that damn first chapter out of the ballpark, and tear on into the manuscript! At last I was going to start editing!
…start…editing… I rewrote the first scene. I threw it away, and wrote another. I resurrected the original first scene. I fixed it. I tossed it again. I wrote another first scene. I tossed that, and brought back the first first scene again. I sat and stared at my manuscript. I printed out the first scene just to rip it into little pieces of confetti. I rewrote it again. I stared at my manuscript.
I spent nearly my whole weekend in a battle of wills with that manuscript, ignoring nearly everything but food and sleep, and finally, FINALLY, I began to win. I moved from the first scene to the second. Decided it had to go, and started writing a new scene to replace it.
Have you spotted my near-fatal mistake? One of my classes, being an eight-week course, finished last week. The other one is still going, friends. At about seven Sunday evening, I realized that I had more than twenty Spanish assignments due by…nine o’clock Monday night.
Panic! Run around flailing! Curse every curse I learned for my Spanish-speaking love interest in this very novel!
One of the assignments didn’t get done. I clicked “submit” on the next-to-last one a few minutes after nine, so it might not be accepted. In the meantime my editing has completely flown my brain, replaced by things like “vaya al infierno” and “yo no puedo escribir más.”
The moral of this story? Singleminded determination and even bullheadedness are good things in editing. But get your homework done first!
And if you can write up a blog post well beforehand, do so. It might save you writing about that dumb thing you did last weekend, just to get your post done on time.