Jumping Back In

This past week I've started printing out and reading through my first draft of my most recent finished work. It's been about roughly four months since the draft was completed. When I first finished it, I was all relief that I had finished this hunky thing that had been following me around for two years. But the other side of me was all, OH MY GOSH, YOU FINISHED A BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are so many mixed feels that come with finishing that first draft and being able to set it down with the words The End written on.

And yet, after I got over the initial excitement, the first thing I thought was. "Oh crap. Now comes the revising." I'm going to be honest here. Revising scares me like heck. It's that whole LOVE IT, HATE IT relationship.

On the one hand, I'm thrilled that I can finally make my book that book I want it to be. After four months of thinking about it, I finally know how to take this ball clay and shape it into something worth loving.

But then we've got the fact that it's like SO FREAKING HARD to edit! Cutting lines, find the right words, scribbling out half of your novel, sometimes even cutting characters...it's kind of disheartening! And the thought of going down that road and repeating the process oh, like A MILLION times isn't exactly reassuring.

So I guess, for me, the challenge is finding the right balance between the excitement and the depression of jumping back into your novel. I don't even know if there is one! But I guess, just facing the fact that it's going to be hard and that I'm going to come face to face with my terrible writing, and then running on all the excitement is what's gonna get me through.

Which means there is only one thing left to do; JUMP RIGHT IN.