Adrift in a sea of editing

This evening, I have actually been working on my book! I haven’t been at the editing stone for a while, due to bad health and then falling madly in love with all you bloggedy bloggers. But yesterday evening I made a promise to myself to work on ’Twenty Years Later’ this weekend – what was the point of whittering on about the anguished path to independent publishing if there was no book to publish?

But my God it’s been hard.

I have persevered, got a chunk completed, all the while resisting the urge to come here and talk to you guys about it. I really wanted to – I love that I have somewhere to come and say this stuff without having to bleat at my poor husband. Well, I still do that too, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

So now I’m here, I want to unpack some of this grim writer stuff. It comes up again and again, and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of having to manage myself so actively when working on the book, tired of the constant battle. I’m exaggerating – sometimes I can write and be at peace, but not tonight.

This evening I went back to post-apocalyptic London. I remembered why I love being there (I’m a strange lass), I remembered how much I need to get this book out there. But that wasn’t the only stuff that came back. All of the self-doubt, the fear, the gut-wrenching insecurity slunk in as well. My internal censor (have you met her yet?) was having a ball.

Luckily, I’ve evolved to the point where I recognise that I can never truly see my writing as it is (just like I know that I can never look in a mirror and see myself as others do). Sometimes I have a feeling that something I have written is right, I like a simile or I feel I have got a description spot on, but most of the time when I am in this horrible place I think it’s all crap.

I bet most of you guys have been there.

But I have to do this! I have to get this book out there! Something in me is driving me towards that. I can’t leave it where it is now, so close to being completed. So I have to edit, even on nights where I think I am the worst damn writer in the world, and I have to move this project towards publication.

When I acknowledged that, an immense chain reaction of thoughts started – typical anxiety behaviour. This road I’m on stopped being a thousand steps taken one at a time and turned into an arduous journey through alien terrain with no supplies and no baggage handlers.

I felt like a tiny little row boat, starting in the home port of “Ok, let’s get the book edited page by page – oh hell, I’ll never get it done”. Then I was passing through the narrow straights of “Oh crap, I am never, ever going to feel like this book is ready to be published, independently or not, as I keep finding new things to edit”. There was a brief stopover at the Isle of Sanity; “That is your perfectionist speaking and at some point you will just have to stop and hand it over,” but then a storm hit and my little boat was thrown onto the rocks of “But if I publish it, other people will see it!”

I was shipwrecked.

I mean, why the bloody hell am I doing this anyway? And why the hell is this so damn scary a prospect when it is the end goal! I want people to read it! Oh no I don’t! Oh yes I do!

I feel like a bloody pantomime!

And it’s too late for tea again. To write one emotional post without tea may be regarded as a misfortune, but to write two looks like carelessness. (I’m so sorry Mr Wilde, I couldn’t resist.)

Then I had a thought. Maybe, the thought whispered, maybe you should post the beginning up here. Just the prologue. Like dipping a toe into the water. This is your place, you’re safe here. And it would be like a gentle introduction to releasing it into the world.

So I’m thinking about it. I might do it soon. I don’t feel brave enough tonight. Hell – did you see the journey I went on earlier? I need to recover my strength!

Oh I am so bored of struggling with this. Another voice in me is railing against this mad, crazy dream I have. “Why are you even considering this? You have no money. You have so little time. Why put yourself through so much stress?”

During my bleating at my husband, I whined plaintively “Why do I have to have such a hard dream!?”

But then immediately I remembered the words of one of my most favourite people in the entire world. When I said the same thing to her a while ago, she simply replied “Because if it was easy, it would be a whim, not a dream.”

This isn’t a whim. This is as integral to me as my body. My lungs are woven out of plot threads and my exhalations are stories. I couldn’t stop writing or making this book physical in the world any more than I could stop breathing.

Tagged as: independent publishing, internal censor, post-apocalyptic London, twenty years later