Not good enough.

I’m having a struggle.

I decided late last year that I want to re-edit all my novels, because I’ve become a much better writer since I wrote them and I want them to be the best they can be.

There’s a camp that believes that a writer who’s gotten better should move on and write the next book, and make that one better than the last. I don’t disagree, necessarily, and I see why wasting valuable time fixing old books can become a trap.

There’s another camp that says, you can fix the old books, so why not? And I agree with that, too.

I am a little worried about fixing up old books becoming a trap. I’m going to fight to just do my best now, and call it good from here.

I was also a little worried that I decided to re-edit my previously released books because I might be stalling with my Big and Glorious Marketing Plan, which was designed to get my books out there and into peoples’ hand and launch my author career for really and for true, a thing which has enticed and terrified me for the better part of my life.

It’s not.

I mean, there might be a little stalling in there, I’ll be honest. I’ve been working on my confidence. It’s not top-notch just yet. My decision came because I realized: I knew the books needed more edits when I released them. I didn’t put the time in because I genuinely thought to myself: “Hardly anyone will read them anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they’re not that good.”

Well, fuck that noise.

If I’m going to implement a Great and Glorious Marketing Plan to Launch my Career, those books need to be as good as I can make them, because dammit, a whole lot of people are going to read them. So there.

I figured spend a year getting all the books re-edited. One year. Not so much in the grand scheme of things.

Well, I’ve spent nearly ten months on book one.

This seems to be for a few reasons: One, I’m working a full-time day job for only the second time in my life. It eats way more of my time than I really like. Two, the book was my very first and needs a lot of work — probably a good bit more than any of the other books will need.

Three, every time I sit down to work on edits, I start to squirm. I start to squirm, I start to fidget, I start looking around the room and thinking of all the other things I need to be doing.

I spent the summer trying to screw up my face and force myself to sit down and edit. Which of course never works.

So I finally realized I need to figure out what my thoughts are around editing and why I’m so resistant to it.

I sat down and said to myself, “Why is editing so hard right now? Why are you fidgeting and trying to put it off?”

And I said back to myself, “I don’t want to.”

And I thought, okay. That’s fair. I’ve been working on this book a long time, I’ve read this story over and over, of course I don’t want to. But this is what I’m doing, so let’s go.

In case you’re in deep suspense, the resistance didn’t get much better.

I tried telling myself, “Come on, you’re good at this! This is what you do, sit down and do it.” That helped a little, but not as much as I needed.

I finally realized yesterday that “I don’t want to” isn’t really an answer.

Why don’t I want to?

When I asked myself that, I got an entirely different answer.

“I don’t want to because it doesn’t matter how much I edit this book, it’s not good enough, I’m not good enough, and it won’t ever be good enough.”

Well. That’s a whole different bucket of worms. Kettle of haggis? Collection of fish? Something. Something that is not the same as “I don’t want to.”

So here’s where my thought work/cognitive behavior work comes in. I know my current thought now. I know it’s not useful. What do I want to think instead?

“I’m awesome! This is awesome! Everything I write is awesome!”

Yeah, well, that’s a far cry from that current thought. If I think that bullshit now, my brain will snort and ignore me.

Okay, so to sort out a new thought, I maybe need to tease out what “good enough” means. Good enough for what? So I asked myself that.

My thought came back, “If I write too slow, my readers will get bored and stop following me and stop reading my books, and if I don’t write good enough, my readers will get annoyed and stop reading my books, and I won’t ever be able to find new readers because no one likes a bad, slow writer.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Okay. That’s a fistful of thoughts. But I can see all of it now, and that feels like the end of the line. There’s nothing really to dig into deeper here. It’s all boiling down to that same old fear of rejection.

So my first new thought about writing too slow is this: Readers are familiar with how long it takes to write a book. It’s a big undertaking, people who read books do understand that. Some writers have taken thirty, forty years to write a six-book series, and readers stayed excited for them. People can read other things while they wait.

And as far as not a good enough writer goes — that’s hugely subjective. I adore Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and while I can’t read horror, Stephen King is pretty awesome. They’ve won awards and sold a lot of copies, that doesn’t mean everyone loves them. I also love P.N. Elrod, a writer who has won awards but has never hit a best-seller list anywhere.

I am writing stories for people who like what I write. That’s it. Maybe that’s a few people, maybe it’s a lot. As long as I can find enough to support me, that’s all I need. I don’t aspire to Neil Gaiman-hood. I aspire to me-hood. I’m good enough for who I’m good enough for.

Those thoughts seem like good stepping stones to “I am awesome! Everything I write is awesome!”

I’ll start there, and keep digging away at that fear of rejection.