Maybe I should have called this post Writing Is Hard. Although there are probably some out there who may disagree with me as their fingers fly across the keyboard while they produce 10,000 words a day.
One of the things that I have been doing for the last year is changing and/or fixing old stories that I got the rights back to and republishing them.
I remember clearly how I thought when I got 13 sets of rights back that it would take me just a few months to re-edit them for re-release and self publish them. God, that makes me laugh now. It’s been a year and I’m still working my way through that thirteen while I also produce new books.
For me it simply was not the case.
As my PA says, “You writers like to polish the polish.”
I’d like to think that as the years have passed my writing has changed and improved. At least I am always trying to learn from my own mistakes as well as from books I read and critique. But the one thing that isn’t easy for me and many writers I know, is going back to something you’ve already finished and finding a way to tear it apart and make it better.
The easy inclination is to keep moving forward and not look back. I’ve even heard writers say they don’t republish old books because they simply can’t go back. Their muse forces them onward. I can understand this. However, for me those old stories are always in the back of my mind whispering to me, taunting me that they too are good stories that deserve to be out there.
Today I am working on one such old book and likely will be for the next few weeks. And I’m still torn between working on it or a new book. So when I came across a motivational line in a blog that clicked with me I thought I would write a quick post to not only share that line but to remind myself and others that some facets of writing are harder than others but make the end result well worth all of the effort.
Revisions are my weakness. Yet I will prevail.
What was the motivational line I read? It was something at http://www.norulesjustwrite.com that CJ Lyons offered as a piece of advice given to her from a literary agent.
“Write a book so good they can’t say no.”
For me that meant I needed to stop whining do what I know this book needs no matter how hard it is. Or in my traditional train of thought…
SUCK IT UP!
Revision on!
Eliza
