Growing a little wiser every day

written by Betsy Flak on 2017-02-17

I was told a million times
Of all the troubles in my way
Mind you grow a little wiser
Little better every day
Queen, "Keep Yourself Alive"

As you know, I've been working diligently on the draft of An Uncertain Death (see February's goals). One suggestion that was consistent among my beta readers was to quicken the pace at the beginning. I listened to them, and, last year, I updated the draft with the goal to speed up the start. I also updated the draft to include more vampires, more supernatural teens, and more magic (another suggestion common among my beta readers). Including during the beginning.

Fast forward to yesterday. I wrap up editing chapter seven and still have writing time left in my schedule. Since I know that chapter eight needs to speed up, I run through the scenes, deciding if they can be deleted, if they can be merged with others, if they can be shortened, etc. The task ends up being a little disheartening since I couldn't cut out nearly as much as I wanted to. But I swallow the disappointment down. After all, the chapter can look a whole lot different once I get my editing paws on it.

Finished with that, I decide to peek at the rest of Part 1. It's then that I realize that I'm only halfway through it and that it's waaaaaay too long. (Side note: I kinda knew this before, but I'd studiously ignored it.) At that point, I feel utterly defeated. My beta readers had suggested that I quicken the pace and somehow I'd actually made it slower! All that work only to result in a worse book. And more work to try to fix it with no guarantee of improvement. As my Book 1 writing time closed, I was down on myself, my books, my future, pretty much everything.

I managed to focus on the rest of my day's activities (researching potential keywords for Amazon and working on creating the ultra-secret Bonus #2 for The Impossible Creation launch). Then I go to walk my dogs. At this point, my brain will not let me escape. It starts obsessing over the problem, but mostly in a way that berates myself. I should have done better. I suck at this. No one will like my books. I have no hope of ever making it as a professional author.

And then an epiphany.

I can allow this mistake to gnaw away at me.

Or I can look at the positives.

A simple choice, yet one that, in over thirty years of negative self-talk, I've never noticed. I choose the latter.

At least I noticed the mistake! That's something I wouldn't (and didn't) notice a year ago.

At least I decided to fix the mistake instead of sticking my head in the ground and ignoring it! That's something I would have done (and did) six months ago.

At least it took me less than twenty-four hours to come up with a solution (and one that doesn't involve more than a few hours' extra work...I think). That's something I'm not sure I could have done even three months ago.

And there you go. Having chosen the positive, optimistic side, I feel energized, ready to fix my book, rather than defeated. The extra work will only improve it. Plus, I'll have even more deleted scenes to offer loyal readers. (Hint: If you want to become one of these loyal readers, hit the button at the bottom of this post!)

There's even better news: moving forward, this should happen less and less. I wrote the rough draft of An Uncertain Death before I'd learned about this handy dandy tool called outlining. Because of this, I've wrestled with An Uncertain Death's content for more than two years (granted, during that time, I've also worked on other stuff, like writing and tweaking Book 2 and outlining, writing, and editing The Impossible Creation plus all the marketing and publishing research that comes with choosing the indie author path). Book 2 unfortunately may have a similarly rough path since it too predates my discovery of outlines. After that, however, it should be smooth(er) sailing.

If it's not, I'll revisit this mistake and continue to learn from it.

Anyway, the reason I tell you all this is not to toot my own horn. It's to remind you that we all make mistakes, but we can't let them eat away at us. If you make a mistake, congratulate yourself for recognizing it. Acknowledge how far you've come. Come up with a plan to mitigate said mistake and to avoid it in the future. Give yourself a pat on the back, then move on.

In other words: "Grow a little wiser, little better every day."

Disclaimer: I'm not saying this is brand-spanking new advice (after all "Keep Yourself Alive" itself was released back in 1973). I'm just one of the stubborn souls who has to learn most everything from personal experience. If that's you too, maybe you'll remember this the next time you're obsessing over a mistake.