Yes. I am back to rewriting my first novel, still or again. I had a story to tell many years ago and I am still determined to tell it. Back then it was simple and clear. In the intervening years I tried to turn it into something that would be popular and commercially viable. It became a romance and a mystery and a whole lot of other things all at the same time. It became cumbersome and unwieldy. It became oh-so-clever and brilliant and wordy and intellectual and convoluted.
Now I am scraping away the extra stuff that has grown on it like moss on a stone stuck in the muck in my garden. I am doing what is known as a final edit! Hah! One of many. I am taking blocks of it and shoving them here or there or simply deleting them. don’t worry when you do this! Your brilliant writing is still there in an older draft for you to read and enjoy someday. It’s not gone. It’s just not part of this story that you are striving to tell.
I have had to sit with myself and remember what it was that I was trying to say. It had something to do with unrequited love, as many of my stories do. It was direct and good and honest once upon a time. It had a voice.
But in the intervening years I got sidetracked by all of the information that was out there about what I should be writing about…
Anyway, none of us are special enough that we get out of taking a good hard look at what we are writing and being brutally honest. I didn’t say being brutal. I said being brutally honest. We have to be kind to ourselves as writers. It is a practice, like you practice the violin, get it?
And furthermore you, yes you, do have something to say. You’ll figure it out. Stay the course. Be gentle. Write. Write while you are in your garden or looking out the window or nodding off. Then you’ll have something to edit!
the word studio 