I Am Editing

Vitality Stories

credit to Peanuts

I Am Editing

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick note to say I’m head down and editing Tiger Drive. I am so frigging close to finishing this edit; I can hardly stand myself. And I mean that in a good way.

I’ve learned a lot over the past 3.5 years of my writing life, but my favorite advice came indirectly from Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project. She said, “Nothing is more exhausting than the task not started.”

I’ve known since last October that I needed do a full revision of Tiger Drive and that this would be my final edit. I put the revisions off for some good reasons (I was writing the draft of my second novel; took a real estate course) and for some lame reasons (too many to share). But armed with a revision plan I figured out in Kelsey Browning’s Big Creative Project course, I finally said enough is enough, and I committed to focusing on Tiger Drive from July 1 – 31st.

Once I started, I felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I began to sleep like a newborn puppy, and I’ve been waking up early because I’m excited to edit. Gretchen Rubin is right. I was spending far more energy thinking about editing than the amount of my energy needed to actually edit it. Yes, it’s hard work and requires a lot of focus (and understanding from a partner) but the reward is real: I will be able to shout out to the world that I wrote Tiger Drive to the best of my capability at this time in my writing life. And then I’ll eat ice cream.

Do you have a project of any size that you’ve been putting off? Tell me about it.

Thanks for being you!

Teri