I experience a mixed bag of emotions when I’m rewriting a piece.
One emotion is excitement because I’m fixing things I had problems with in the original draft. Another is trepidation because I’m worried that the things I actually did enjoy about my original draft will have to be cut out.
Each thing you change in a story has a domino effect. One little paragraph can completely change the tone.
You have to choose what you change very carefully.
There’s also the humiliation of realizing you actually let another human being read this when it doesn’t remotely resemble what you hoped it would be.
I’m going to attempt to do something I’ve never done before.
I am going to literally take it page by page and rework as much as I can in my favor. Every word I don’t like, every clumsy sentence, every image that isn’t just right is going to get the hedge clippers.
Just the thought makes me want to drink an entire bottle of whisky straight out of the bottle, but it seems as though this is the only method that will make this venture worth while.
How else will I justify spending months on this thing?
The Crooked Pen 