When my first book came out, I had spent so much time
looking at it during the editing phases, I honestly wanted nothing to do with
it after I’d sent it in to the publisher.
However; when Nyah (the kidlet) read it, she pointed out a few errors,
which had me spun up for weeks. You see,
I’m a classic Type A Personality with a side of perfectionist. I honestly didn’t want to know or hear that I’d
put something out there with a few errors and I tried to ignore it for the
better part of a year.
Now, a year later, I am currently in the midst of sending my
second book into the publisher. I have
also decided to go back through my first book and fix those errors as well as
make a few changes to the writing in general.
Nothing drastic, mind you. I have
just learned so much, having gone through the editing process twice now that I
want to put that learning to use by fixing a few things in my first book.
So ... here I am, working on two books to send to the publisher
and feeling like a big ball of stress. I
spend nights trying to sleep, only to get caught up with second-guessing myself
or getting up to go back through something in my book that I thought I probably
should change or go over to make sure it makes sense. At some point, you have to just let it be,
right? Right?
As my mind is racing and I’m continually going round and
round with the story and making sure there are no holes, my daughter, Nyah,
politely pointed out to me that this is what I chose to do. To which I replied, “Yes, and I enjoy it very
much, but it’s stressing me out!”
I get that whatever job we choose, even if we absolutely
love it through-and-through, it’s still going to carry some amount of
stress. What I have trouble with is how
my Type A Personality interprets and reacts to the whole stress process.
I’ll always have trouble with this, I know. So, I just have to tell myself after a
million rather large deep breaths that I guess I just have to plug in my earbuds,
turn on my writing music, and continue to “March” through.
