On Letting Go

I'm about to turn in first pass pages. Ironically, first past pages are typically the last time an author gets a chance to make any changes to a novel. Do you know what that makes first pass pages?

Terrifying.

This is it, my last chance to make sure this book doesn't suck before it really and truly enters the world. But as I've read through it from beginning to end this time around, all I can see are the many, many things that are wrong with it. Normally, this would be a recipe for disaster for a lifelong perfectionist like myself, but a happy circumstance has intervened: a cold.

That's right. I have a cold, the bone-weary sinus-achy type. And because I have felt like dog poo for the past four days, I just haven't had the energy to change a whole hell of a lot in THE BIRD AND THE BLADE. The common cold has forced me to let it go. *Cue the music*

via GIPHY

Wow, I was going to use Elsa, but Benedict Cumberbatch is way better. Let's have a little more of that.

via GIPHY

So, I feel like fate is teaching me a lesson in adulting here. At some point, whether it's a book or those handmade Christmas presents or that ludicrously ambitious home remodeling project, I've got to learn when to put the proverbial paintbrush down.

And really, isn't there a kind of narcissism in my tendency to overthink and overdo? Doesn't that indicate that I care a little too much about what other people think of me? Doesn't that assume other people think of me at all? 

I've been working on this book for ... what? ... five years? Over five years. It's done. It's done like potato (as my third grade teacher used to say). Are there bits that scream, "Amateur!"? Yes. Yes, there are. But am I a better writer now because I've spent the past five years writing THE BIRD AND THE BLADE? Lord, I hope so. Maybe that's why I can so easily recognize the novel's faults. This first book taught me how to write a book, and that ain't bad.

So, here I go. I'm not going to look at this book again. I'm going to put it in a big envelope and send it back to my publisher.

(Someone, hold my hand, please.)