Slowly Coming Around

As convention season approaches (assuming there IS a convention season), I kick myself in the ass, as always, for not having more published stories out in the world. Alas, alack, and all that. I have only myself to blame. In particular, my allergy to editing, which I have written about a year ago.

Well, time for a progress report.

I do love a good challenge, particularly a personal challenge. If it’s a goal that I can put on a list and check off, I’m in. As to whether or not I check off goals more often than I simply move them over and over to some future day…no comment.

But this editing thing needed to be conquered. I mean, I have this astounding writing group that gives some of the best critique available, and if all I do is take the feedback and file it away instead of putting it to use, that’s nobody’s problem but my own.

So what is my deal with editing, anyway? I asked my therapist. Then, in the great therapeutic tradition of therapists who stare and nod sagely, I answered my therapist. Fear.

That age-old fuel of procrastinators everywhere. I mean, what is editing but an confirmation that you’re not a good writer, right? Look at all that terrible prose, so replete with stinkiosity that you have to EDIT IT.

At least, that’s how the old me saw it. In the past year, I feel like I’ve gone back to school, looking at prose, at voice and style and story structure, in new ways. I’ve taken old stories and made them new with all that I’ve learned in the ensuing years. It’s been a journey.

I’ve been editing stories lately at a rapid clip, trying to get them back into circulation. After an embarrassingly long hiatus, I’m starting to submit stories again.

I read these stories aloud as a step in the final editing process. Lately, I’m more pleased than horrified. That’s progress.