Is it bad to enjoy reading your own book?
I'm still working on the novel, still plugging away at editing one chapter a day. It's about all I can do, given my schedule constraints.
And so far, it's...not that bad?
I mean, I'm probably filling in gaps that are there because I know the characters, I know the setting. But I was trying to write the equivalent of an action movie, and while I think I failed at that (there's not nearly enough stunts or fights in it to qualify), I think I did manage to produce a fast-paced, sci-fi, thriller.
Each of the chapters are short -- the longest is maybe ten pages -- which makes them easier to edit, but also easier to read.
And I've kept the language pretty tight, as well. Not always tight enough, hence the need for edits. And sometimes I wander off into describing a character's thoughts from the outside, inside of rendering them from the inside (it's a shift in point of view that I'm still learning how to handle properly). But overall, each scene starts, flows, and then ends without a lot of fat to trim.
Which worries me, of course. What am I missing? What am I not seeing, that I need to fix?
It reminds me of something the write C Robert Cargill tweets about a lot: That when you look at your work, and hate it, part of it is because of the difference between your skills and your taste. Your taste is likely far more sophisticated than your skills, starting out. You enjoy reading writers far better than you. And that's good! Your sophisticated taste is what lets you see the problems in your own work, which you can then fix.
So I have to wonder: Has my taste declined? Have I been slacking in feeding it new works, so I can be critical of my own?
Or am I just still too close to this book?
Either way, I'm not upset at these chapters. They're not so horrible that I wouldn't want to show them to someone else.
Which perhaps is good? And maybe the point of doing all these editing passes and rewrites. To get the book to a point where I think it's ready to be seen by other people.
Flawed still, probably, yes. But good enough to go out to beta readers, and eventually (after more edits) agents. That should be the goal, right?
And if I'm getting there, I should feel good about it. Not dread.
Note to self: Stop feeling dread.
