The New Order

This morning I emailed off my last paper for my summer course, which means I am now free to spend any time outside of work editing my novel. That's...a little scary, honestly, but it's okay. I had a migraine earlier, but once the excedrin kicked in I thought I might go read and I decided "No, I'm going to try to do some edits. If it doesn't work, I'll go read some Fitzgerald, but I at least need to try." Because that's my thing, I don't always try, I put it off, because "don't feel like it," or some other crap excuse. Today I tried--and turns out, I actually was able to do something with this MS.

When I am writing and especially when I am editing, I sometimes look at what I've written and think "Wow. I wrote this? Seriously, I did? This is actually really good." I might even realize deeper meanings in the prose that I hadn't consciously placed there originally, but is just so gosh-darned good. I amaze myself, sometimes.

Other times I look at the page and wonder how I even managed to get this far. I should have stopped ages ago, because obviously, I suck. I really suck. And I make really stupid mistakes, like using the wrong name for a character or have a seriously huge error in continuity or something like that.

But, it's edits, these moments are supposed to happen, right? (Oh God, I hope that's right.) I'm supposed to realize that I actually can make something out of what I've got so far and see the potential in my own work; realize that I have talent and build up my self-esteem to get me through to the end. I'm also supposed to find all those really stupid mistakes so that I can fix them—that's what editing is all about, really. I'm supposed to take something that pretty much sucks, but has potential, and turn that piece of coal into a shiny new diamond, ready to be cut and placed on a ring that I can later use to propose a marriage between myself and an agent.

So, bad news: The entire first half of my novel needs some serious work and the second half has a lot of errors with names and places.
Good news: I think I figured out how to fix it all, by rearranging some of the chapters in the first half. What was once chapter 1 is now chapter 4, and the prologue is gone completely (for now?). What was once chapter 15 is now chapter 5, and the end of chapter 4 will have to be rewritten to reflect the changes. Well, a lot of things will have to be rewritten to reflect these changes. All writing is rewriting, after all.