Non-Prolific

So I find myself in a post-edit funk today. Not that my edits are done, by any stretch. But I’ve gone through everything, scratched out my notes, made some tweaks, drew some maps and timelines and all that fun stuff needed to solidify the world.

And now I get to go back and make all those changes. It should be exciting and on one level it is really nice to see everything come together. But there’s still a lot of second-guessing going on. I’m still not sure it’s what I originally envisioned. Well, I know it’s not – which doesn’t make it bad, but I can’t help feeling it’s not good enough.

(On the scale of things, this isn’t a bad place to be – I’m in a prime position to make changes as much as I want. You know, as opposed to 1st pass pages where I decide I need to completely rewrite three chapters or something. Part of my issue is that I haven’t sent it out for any feedback from anyone yet – it won’t be ready until at least this first pass of edits is complete. It’s easy to second-guess yourself when you’ve been immersed in something for so long – after a while your pov gets skewed.)

I’ll continue to plug away at it – my hernia surgery is scheduled for the 3rd week of June, so bonus if I can get it wrapped up by then and off to the agent and beta readers (just so I don’t have it hanging over my head while I recover).

But there have been times today when I just feel like I’m never productive enough. I’m not a fast writer and I’ve got a lot of real-life stuff going on – family and job and chronic illness and all that – but I still can’t help but compare myself to writer friends who have the magic ability to pump out manuscripts with ease. I know it’s not a competition, but there’s always that voice that constantly tells me I’d be more productive if I could just stop doing x or start doing y.

Which may or may not be true. There’s a certain amount of sanity I’d like to retain going forward, and there are certain things I cannot sacrifice for additional time right now.

Even so, I’m not entirely sure what to do to break the funk. I realize I’m probably too hard on myself (and there’s always a fun amount of self-loathing worked into the mix, but I can recognize that for what it is and as long as I don’t poke at it too hard, I can manage.)

Frankly, I’m rather tired of whining about it, but there it is.