Changing my mindset-editing

Hello again! 2023 is only beginning, but I hope it's going well for you so far! 

It's time for another week of elaborating on something I've spoken about, with a few notes on my experiences having gone through this for a while now. This post is specifically aimed at all the overachievers, Wunderkinds, and kids for whom school was never an issue, for whom a simple criticism, no matter how kindly worded, felt like a slap in the face... Hi, nice to meet you, adulthood is harder than we expected, isn't it? 

I don't know about you, but I was utterly unprepared for how painful changing, and tearing apart a first draft would be. I couldn't help feeling like I should have done better in the first place, and I didn't understand how issues could still be hidden in the text after three or four rounds of editing. If this sounds familiar, I'm sorry, that is truly awful, but I'd like to encourage you it doesn't have to be that way forever. 

There are more uplifting quotes about editing than I can begin to mention here, so rather than attempting to make my own, or quote them all, I'd suggest you look them up yourself if you'd like. (Pinterest is a good place to look for these, for some reason. Try looking up "quotes about first drafts.)

I can honestly say that in time, even if it seems impossible, your mindset can (and likely will) shift. Rather than feeling that you are destroying countless hours of hard work, you will begin to see editing as a time to clarify, improve and even better understand what's been going on under your pen (or keyboard) all this time. 

You may need to remove some quote or description that is incredibly near and dear to your heart, (note remove, not necessarily delete forever) and it will be sad, but when you can see the finished product, you won't miss it too much. 

Critiques are hard to accept at first, but (assuming you have good Beta readers) in time you learn to see these as helping hands, hoping to make your book into something incredible, not as barbs against you as a writer.

I guess you could very fairly say that I'm suggesting you distance yourself as a writer from your book, which is very nearly true... But actually, the trick I've learned is to hold onto your book with a loose grip, not so tight as to throttle it, stifling its growth, nor so loosely that your original vision blows away. The trick is to find the core, the basic story you want to tell, the characters whose stories you are being entrusted to tell, and to hold on as tightly as you can, as for the rest? Take a step back, and use that distance, and the advice of your peers to shape it into something beautiful.

Have a great day, and keep writing!