Too Many Trees in the Forest (Too Many Places to Hide)

Last Sunday, I was supposed to really dig into the revising of the manuscript I've been working on for a little over two years now. And I tried. I did.

But if I'm completely honest with myself, I'm feeling lost. Lost and maybe a bit overwhelmed. I can't see the forest for the trees or the trees for the enormity of the forest. So instead of digging my heals in and getting to the tough work of editing the words that are so close to my heart, I cheated.

I'm not sure how it happened, but my fingers slid and clicked their way to the document on the screen titled simply "NaNoWriMo2012," a document I hadn't once felt tempted to open since completing my 50,000 some words during the last days of November. I can't even say what I expected would happen when I opened the file, but before I even realized what I was doing, I was reading. I was reading words that I had written, for the first time ever.

And they weren't so bad.

Before I knew it, I'd read the first twenty pages, fixing a few typos, adding and deleting the occasional sentence. And I was enjoying the story. Reading about Henry felt a bit like catching up with an old friend. Sometimes I found it hard to believe they were my words and my ideas (and a few times I was embarrassed that they were my words and my ideas).

Since then, I've been picking away at NaNoWriMo2012, reading a chapter here and a chapter there, continuing my procrastination of the work I know I should be doing. I feel less guilty than if I wasn't editing at all, but I still feel guilty. It doesn't help that Henry is a character with a certain vulnerability and charm that just draws me in...which is probably why I wrote a book about him in the first place.

The truth is, I think there is a part of me that doesn't want to ever finish Something Worth Holding On To because when I finish it, I have to send it out into the world to see what happens, for better or for worse. Right now it's in a safe little space. A few people have read versions of it and pieces of it, but I'm the only one who knows where the story stands. I've discovered there is a shield that comes with a "Work In Progress" that protects your pride and right now I'm a little too comfortable there.