Obsessive

I'm in the dreaded rewriting phase of this whole business.  I know, I've been saying editing, but really it's more revising or rewriting or...whatever (DNA writers just put up this fab post explaining the difference.)

I have a very one-track mind.  When I do something, I REALLY do it.  David (lovingly) calls it "an obsessive personality," and unfortunately for our firstborn, he inherited it from me.  It's how I got through rabbinical school remembering so much (yeah, I'm a rabbi.  Have we been over this?), and it's how I got 80,000 words of a rough draft pounded out in five months in just a few hours a week.

Anyway, the significance for this particular moment in our lives is that I have been frantically unpacking the house since we moved in ten days ago.  Every day I tell myself I'm going to squeeze a little writing/editing into the middle of the day, while the children nap, and it just doesn't happen.  I get so obsessed with hanging skirts or organizing toys or hanging pictures that I'm completely exhausted by the time David gets home, and I collapse.

Of course, I would have given up everything for the writing if that's what I really wanted to be doing. But, between you and me, my draft has been acting a little funny.  It's not the book I fell in love with.  My clumsy writing is making an incredible story look kind of awkward and boring.  Some days I think my twist isn't twisty enough. Some days I want to cry because I am terrified I'm writing a Mary Sue and everyone knows that people can't handle more than one of those pretty much ever, and Bella Cullen already fantastically fills the role.  Some days I think that OMG there is NO tension in this POS.  Some days I am so in love with the Boy that I'm terrified my writing will never do him justice (or maybe I just don't want to share him with anyone.)

And so I've been avoiding the draft. I don't want to talk to it about its problems, I just want it to go to rehab on its own accord. Or find a new author who can make it into something better.  Since I know it will do neither, I'm buckling down again.  But maybe I should just download the latest version of Scrivener first....