Writing and other jobs I've held

Hello World!

I’m about 1/6th of the way through my first rewrite of my novel. I don’t find rewriting to be nearly as much fun as writing. Although I expected as much, I had hoped I might be happily surprised once I got going. Instead, this part of the process has the feeling of simply plodding along.

Rewriting is far more structured, for one thing, than writing was in the haphazard fashion I chose that fit my personality. Going through the list of attributes each scene has to contain, and figuring out how to fit them all in smoothly can be difficult as well, especially in a short scene.

On the other hand, I love being back with my characters again. I’m quite fond of them! And watching their story get tighter and more interesting is very rewarding.

A wonderful surprise has been how much I love throwing scenes away. I’ll find one I wrote mainly for myself, so I knew where the story was going, and I’ll read through it, getting ever more excited as I realize how much I can cut. I love looking at the total number of pages at the bottom of my Word window, blowing the scene away (wheeeeee!), and seeing how many pages have vanished. I keep deleted scenes in a separate file, in case I need something from them later, and that gives me freedow from worrying that I’ve lost anything. Watching those drearier scenes go is seeing improvement in real time sans slog.

Every job I’ve held in my life was similar in that no matter how much I really enjoyed suggesting books as a librarian, counseling a client, or discovering new information as a researcher, there were always the tasks that I needed to plod through: shelving books, doing paperwork, or entering data. The difference is that the enjoyment level of the writing, for me, was far above the enjoyment level of many of my jobs, and so far, the plodding part is still better than most of the past mud slogging.

I wonder how running the publishing gamut will feel? I suspect it will be my least favorite part, but I’m not ready to go there yet. I’m going to stay in the now as long as the rewriting lasts.