Getting the Job Done

That’s where I’m at right now with my edits: getting it done, doing what most writers call the ‘real’ writing. I tend to agree. Rewrites, editing is so much like panning for gold. Swirling what you have in the pan, looking for the nuggets of good. I truly love it when it’s going well, but when it isn’t; it feels a whole lot like trudging up a mountain trail.

You have a destination, you have great scenery, sometimes, you have great company, but after awhile you also have fatigue, sore feet and aching muscles. That’s when you have to reach inside and find what it takes to keep going.

Everyone has something that works:

When my husband and his brother went grouse hunting, they’d wear themselves getting to where they hunted. On their way back to their truck, tired, cold and wet, they would talk about the hamburger and chocolate malt they were going to buy on the way home. They would describe exactly what it would smell and taste like, the whole way to their truck.

Bikers pick a landmark and bike to it, then pick another and another. They go miles that way. Hikers use the same methods. Walkers put one foot in front of the other, their iPod blaring in their ear.

When you tell yourself you’re tired, you just can’t do this anymore, when your writing doesn’t work and you think you will never be published, you put one foot in front of you.

And while you’re putting that foot in front of the next you keep your head in the game. That isn’t always easy. There are other stories whispering in your ear, trying to seduce you. Telling you, they’ll be easier, better.

I have a mantra to fight that. Nose over the toes. I read that in Hannah Nyala’s Point Last Seen: Nose over the toes. It reminds me not get my mind too far ahead of my feet. My mind too far ahead of what I’m doing.

Take today. Do the edits the best you can. Do that tomorrow and tomorrow until you get through the book. And if it needs it again. You start again. There is no other way, but that’s ok, because that is how you learn to do it better for the next time.

Happy edits.