Here’s a thing I believed in the halcyon days of 17 hours ago: I was nearly done with my first six chapters, my story would definitely launch on Sunday, September 22, and I was going to spend that afternoon at a conference in Toronto happily catching up other people’s blogs and conquering my TBR pile.
The only part I got right was that I will be at a conference in Toronto.
But it’s okay. I can now say with confidence that real date my story will start updating is Sunday, September 29th. (which, even as type it, feels like a failure because that part of my brain that is trained to use perfectionism as a tool to punish me and keep me from trying new things is chattering away).
I’m gonna ignore that voice.
Sunday, September 29th! And what will I be doing in the meantime? Oh gosh, I’m so glad you asked:
Redoing every single post!
Uh. Yeah. I learned the difference between a png and a jpeg y’all. And it might seem like a small difference but when it comes to having a billion images load for your story, it like matters.
After I finished internally (and let’s be honest, externally) screaming, I realized that the only thing I could do was fix it. And this is where this blog is teaching me some life lessons and has 100% been an amazing journey even if no one reads it. See, in the process of fixing those images, I started taking a closer look at my writing.
Might as well do a proofread for no reasons whatsoever because a lot of what I wrote is like, fine, I thought.
But it turns out, after writing six chapters, I had done a decent amount of tweaking and character development. Now, I have a chance to go back and layer in that development. Nothing major, but here and there were places where I realized: oh dang! What this character would actually say is different because two chapters from now, I built out more of their backstory.
And I mean, excuse my hubris, I certainly did have typos to fix.
Anyways, I could have (and once upon a time, would have) wasted a lot of time wallowing in self-pity and frustration. But damn it if my mom wasn’t right: there are opportunities even in your mistakes. So, I’m coming down the homestretch and putting the finishing touches on things.
Ultimately, I feel like all of this will be worth it. I mean, this is not a sustainable pace whatsoever but I needed to get a bunch of chapters in the bank. Once I start the story on Sunday, September 29 (jeez, how many times am I going to mention this date?), I’ll be able to slow down and write one chapter at a time. That’s the dream! Then this becomes a nice little creative outlet that I can work on a little bit at the time.
I won’t say that I’ll always be six weeks ahead or that I won’t have any interruptions because life happens. I don’t need to set myself up for feeling like a failure by creating impossible to maintain standards (Did you need to hear that? Honey child, me too).
But I do think I’ll be able to manage pretty well.
Okay, back to editing (omg just kidding, I have a 9:30am meeting so literally, time to drive to my actual job).
