As mentioned in an earlier post, I received some very encouraging feedback from an agent. The feedback did have suggestions for changes. Overall, the changes were a good idea but not very complex or difficult. That only leaves the question, why did I have such a hard time doing them.
My trouble with making the changes didn’t have anything to do with the changes themselves. Instead, the difficulty was with making myself actually do them. I’ve had a week off from my day job and yet it is only on the second to last night that I’ve made myself sit to make the changes.
They are done now. I will let them sit for a day or two and then review them to make sure I didn’t do anything blatantly stupid. That’s my normal process for fixing things; fix it and then double check after a short break. There shouldn’t be any major problems.
None of that addresses the fact that this should have been done nearly a week ago. Procrastination is a problem. From what I hear from writing friends, it’s not a rare problem. Still, with all the excitement that the feedback provided, I should have been more aggressive about scheduling time for the rewrite.
As I review things, at least as well as I can, I think I have an idea of the issue. This novel is very important to me. I have put in a lot of work and emotional energy. I really want it just right, and this feedback helps me do that. As a slight perfectionist, especially with a bit of an ego, I think I’m afraid I won’t get it right. I believe there is a fear that I won’t be able to get the novel perfect.
There’s probable a host of psychological theories on why someone would avoid working on something out of fear that they won’t get it right. I’m not a psychologist and don’t want to pay the session fees to discuss this matter, so I’ll just make note of the issue and try to adjust my to-do lists to accommodate the possibility of future occurrences. Maybe that will help.
Either way, the rewrites are already done. I’ll double check them in a couple of days. If all works well, I’ll see about submitting to agents again before the end of the week. Then I can start procrastinating on my next work.