Manuscript Printed

 

If you're a writer you know how different it is to read your manuscript on actual paper. It's like magic. Like you're reading your story for the very first time and it hasn't even been written by you. All the mistakes, nonsensical sentences and stuff you couldn't even have imagined stand out to you exactly like in somebody else's work.

So, I printed out my recent writing project for the first time. I've printed parts of it before, when I had a bad editing slump but this is the first time for this whole huge stack of paper, 500+ pages, to stand before me in all its awkwardness. I couldn't fit it into one binder. I guess you often don't fully realize the amount of writing you've done before you see it as a stack of paper, even though you see the word and the page count all the time. So much of it has been rewritten though, for so many times already it doesn't exactly even reflect the amount of work accurately.

I don't really have anything mind blowing to say about any of this. I just wanted to put my thoughts about the current state of my writing process somewhere.

I know that I'm reaching the point where I can't do anything to improve my story by myself anymore. There are a few minor things I still want to change, then read the whole thing on paper one more time and that's probably going to be it.

At some point the colour coded highlights and stacking the manuscript in chapters will just stop adding any new perspective on it. Text wise, I'm already at the point where I go over one sentence for countless times, change one word and the next time I read it, I change it back. The time to let someone else make their judgement is clearly near.

I don't think I have anything enlightening to say about editing in general either. Last week was awesome, the answers to all the insecurities I had about the story just kept coming to me faster than I could write but this week, I guess I'm in a bit of a slump again. Technically, I know the parts I still have to change and I know how to do that but instead, I keep rereading and rewriting the text on the surface level.

I'm not too stressed about it though. I know I'll find the flow sooner or later again and then the changes will turn out much better than they would right now.

Since I currently seem overly conserned with details, I'm just going to try to make the most of it, and nitpick on my writing untill it wears off.

Hopefully, and probably, soon.