Choked

So much for my writing deadline.  It doesn't help when I know the due dates are artificial.  I got a lot of work done toward getting my manuscript edited by the deadline.  But a lot is not the same as all, not by half.  I knew deep down [or not so deep down] that the deadline wouldn't make me or break me.  I want this manuscript done and sent to the editor.  I want to move on to my other book for a while.  But it's really hard to sit and use as much time as is necessary to get it all done.  So I had to extend.  I just hope I don't have to extend again.

It's not that an extension is all bad.  I have more time.  But this puts off my submission to another publisher even more.  It means people who might be helped along in their healing process have to wait that much longer for my novel.  It frustrates me to fail in even this artificial a due date.  I just need to find a way to motivate myself, a set number of hours to work on this project daily and a reward [maybe something without excessive calories] to give myself every time I succeed in meeting that goal.  I know I can do this.  I just need to do it.  It's so much more fun to do the actual writing.

Ignoring the Elephant

I have started tearing apart the manuscript of my first book, After the Dream, as per recent feedback.  I kept the original draft, but I see now that it won't work for a lot of readers.  It's just not "fun" enough.  It hurt to write, so it hurts to read it.  As I said before, I have feedback that would guide me how to turn it into a standard romance.  But I don't WANT it to be a standard romance.  The, for me, there's no point in writing a standard romance since there are so many.  The book for me is at least as much about healing as it is about romance.  So I need that aspect.  How do I balance fun and meaning?

So while I ponder that, I'm off doing some fun and frivolous writing on the first draft book two of my middle-grade fiction series, Doomimals.  The first, Cock-a-doodle-DOOM, one has mostly been run through League of Utah Writers for feedback and is also waiting a revision, as is the first draft of the sequel to After the Dream, Pigs Fly.

So what do I do in the face of all this revision that needs to be done?  I entertain my kids with chapter after chapter of the fun stuff, Cat-a-clysm, because they're my most immediate audience.  I no sooner finish one chapter then they have to have the next.  Which makes me wonder what I was doing wrong with the first one that they weren't pushing me quite so hard to get them a new chapter.  Maybe it's just because this one is about CATS, and as far as they're concerned, nothing is more important.  So I keep looking at the elephant, the large pile of revision to be done.  And while I'm looking at it and trying to guilt trip myself into doing something about it, I'm entertaining kids.  It's the adult, mature version of procrastination.