Yesterday Kid A was at a sleepover at his grandparents and Baby D slept in until 9:30. That meant I had ninety beautiful minutes of complete peace. Total quiet. No one needing a snack, or a diaper, or just plain attention. Just me and my blissfully empty house.
So I grabbed my music and my coffee and settled in for an hour and a half of ploughing through my editing, right? Well…not exactly. This hasn’t come up for a while, but I do have a tendency, when I’m reaching the end of a project (or even the end of a stage of a project) of dragging that end out for as long as possible. As such, I spent that ninety minutes cleaning my kitchen and doing laundry. This wasn’t time wasted at least – both had needed doing for a while (ironically, I often neglect such things for my writing when I’m no where near the end) and I was expecting my parents over that afternoon. However, it did mean that by the time Baby D started yelling for me I hadn’t edited a single paragraph. I don’t know why I do this, especially when I have another stage coming up right after; it isn’t as though this will mark the end of the project and I’ll be sending it out to agents after this. However, once this draft is done I WILL be sending it out…to readers. Then I get to spend the next who-knows-how-long trying not to freak out while I wait for those copies to come back so I can tackle Draft 3.
Wait, maybe I do understand why I’m procrastinating.
At least I recognized what was happening, so when my parents left last night and my husband asked me if I wanted to do my editing before or after we watched some TV, I chose to work on my draft first. I’m pretty sure that if I had chosen to do it after I would have just watched TV until it was too late to do anything else. I made the right decision in that because I got into an excellent flow with it last night and managed to finish up the dreaded Chapter Two edit. That means that all I have left now are two pages of slightly complicated inputs and then I have to go through all of the ‘highlighted paragraphs’…scenes throughout the piece that I need to rewrite because I don’t particularly like how they sound. I think I have one, perhaps two weeks left and then I can call this draft done.
Eep.
One thing that I am eagerly anticipating while the manuscript is in the hands of others (just let me reiterate: AAAAAAAA) is that I will finally be able to work on some unrelated writing projects. It’s not that I can’t work on those now. In fact, sometimes I think I should work on those now, just to give myself a break. But the self-imposed deadlines and the two kids crawling all over me from dawn till dusk mean that I really haven’t allowed myself to do anything more than think about those other ideas. I won’t even let myself work on sequels until I get this draft back from my readers so any work I do in the interim will have to be truly unrelated. And I am kind of looking forward to that. Not that I don’t adore my current work and my characters. But there are ideas and characters who would like to take just a little bit of my time…and I should probably let them, since as soon as I get my copies back I’ll be throwing myself into Draft 3 and they will be relegated into the back of my head once more (though perhaps this time with some notes down at least!)
And an update to this before I post this blog….a few hours later those two pages of inputs are done.
Double eep.
Fictional Impulse 
And the crowd goes wild! *looks around* Well, this crowd of me goes wild. Awesome work, Em. Glad to hear it’s going well. *hugs*
All of you? Wow! 😉
Seriously, thanks so much for the support. It means more than I can say (or write :P)
Congrats, Em! It’s a long road just to get the first draft done! Cheers on your edits!
Thanks very much!
I must admit I’ve done that too. I had some time pop up but I did every other sort of writing I had, instead of my editing. I’ve always been frightened of editing and I know this is just a reflex of that. I’ve got to get over it though, if I ever want to publish.
I didn’t tackle other writing because that I really couldn’t justify (if I even got in front of my computer I’d feel I had to do the edits). I don’t mind the editing itself once I get into it, it’s just a matter of starting it up in the first place!
For me, procrastination is linked to fear. The fear is for different reasons, and I procrastinate sending my ms out to agents–fear of rejection. I’m glad that you chose to work on your ms before TV, knowing what you were really doing. That takes a lot of guts and determination. Keep it up!
Thanks! I think it is linked to fear for me as well. If I finish it up then I have to send it to readers which is scary enough (what if they hate it? What if they tell me to rewrite it? AAAAAA). But then if I get it back even with positive comments, then I fix it up and THEN it goes to agents and then…yeah….rejection fear.
I think it’s really cool that your husband takes your work seriously enough to acknowledge that you have editing to do. I hope whoever I marry gets that and understands that my writing is a job that needs doing just like any other job.
I hope you do as well! I consider myself very lucky – my husband has always been supportive of my writing and he is often the one who pushes me through when I feel like giving up. I think it’s important that partners support each other’s dreams and help each other do whatever it takes to work towards them.
Thanks very much for the follow…I’ll have to go check out your site. 🙂