So Apparently I'm Not Perfect (and other laments from the beginning rounds of editing)

So I'm in the middle of editing...

I'm only about six or seven chapters into my newest project and I've already decided that it's awful. Of course, intrinsically I understand that that is just perfectionism and insecurity talking, however, it is very loud and I am very persuasive when talking to myself. 

      I'm definitely looking forward to my later chapters, where things start to come together and it seems less like a mash of undefined words sitting together on a page, but part of me is afraid that it will always feel like absolutely nothing is happening until the very last page. And then I'll have to face the facts that I have 106k words with absolutely zero direction to them. And I very much dislike having to add that direction after the first draft. 

      This is why I like having a published book. The Half Glass Girl is a testament to the fact that a book can go from a directionless heap of unplotted words to a novel. I just have to keep working and praying and working and praying and working - it's uhh, not exactly as glamorous as I'd like it to be. 

     As much as I'd like to complain about it constantly, though, this type of struggle is the thing that connects us to our books. We're forced to pour ourselves just a little into the project and it's forced to pour back. We earn a position of give and take with our novels that allow us to look into its interworkings and understand what needs to change. Sometimes we're able to do that for ourselves, too, and the project that results from it is a lot more profound than we expected. And sometimes it's just cheesy. That's where it becomes useful to pray. I mean, it's always useful to pray, but tell my easily distracted bird-brain that. I think letting God into a project is literally my only saving grace for getting it done. I have mad respect for non-Christian authors who continue writing without having a whole mental breakdown because if it's not the most mentally taxing hobby I've ever undertaken, I don't know what is. 

      I've given advice to so many young and new writers about not being afraid of their book, I've talked about how crazy it is to be afraid to write, and I've basically made every speech known to mankind about persevering, and yet this is one project I'm genuinely afraid of. I have no real reason to be, but part of me constantly wonders "What if this is my breaking point? What if I can't edit this one into perfection? What if I don't have enough drive?" And then I remember the six months it took me to buckle down and finish the first draft of the Half Glass Girl, the multiple times I cried over the work I had to do or wished I could just figure out how to write and I remember that achieving goals isn't easy. At all. 

      Something that always helped me through writing the Half Glass Girl was the idea that if I was this discouraged by it, it must be important enough that something is trying to stop me from letting others see it. And now I look back on the Half Glass Girl, at how much growth I found writing it, and I'm utterly grateful I had that experience. I don't know what lesson I'll learn from the Six Gulls, but if I'm truly this discouraged, it must be great. 

Julie, from the depths of the second draft