A writer's work is never done....

I am definitely exhausted at the moment.  It’s now 6:15 PM here in Miami.  I’ve been at it since I got up, at exactly 1:08 PM… Oh, yeah, I like to pull my late nights on weekends, and then get up late, too.  Not that I go out clubbing or anything.  My late nights are spent on reading, mostly, or browsing on the Internet.  I try to combine both. 

Since Friday, I’ve been obsessively busy with this one Twilight-inspired story, “It Happened That Night”.  I originally posted it on fanfiction.net, a couple of years ago.  It was the last story I posted on that site, and I had not been back since.  I guess I got hung up on whether or not I got a lot of reviews.   I know I shouldn’t be, but when I see that any of my stories is not getting reviews, well, I can’t help but feel bad…

Suddenly, out of the blue, my subconscious mind decided to tinker with it again. And tinker I did!!  I’ve only stopped now.  I think the story is finally the way I want it to be.  It does feel complete now.

I wrote an entirely new section for it, and revised and revised and revised it until I had it just ‘right’.  Then I went back into the older section of the story, and revised some parts of it, as well.  

I deleted my original story from ff.net, and posted the new and improved version, with the title “Saturday Night in Port Angeles”.  I hoped no one would remember the previous story, but I couldn't risk it.  With a new title, it would surely stand a chance to be read, I thought.

I’m very much a perfectionist when it comes to writing.  And I’ve always heard it said, by writers with many books in their resumes, that one should do a lot of revising. One should be willing to toss out the most incredibly beautiful sentences, if they’re not contributing anything meaningful to the story, not advancing the plot, or telling the reader anything about a  character that they didn’t already know.

This is why writing is so time-consuming, and downright hard work.  This is also what makes it such a daunting undertaking.  But you know what?  The more you do it, the more passionate you get about it.  The more you lose your fear of the writing process itself.  

When you first put fingers to the keyboard ( occasionally I do put pen to paper, as I did before my computer geek husband got me a laptop), you feel stiff, unsure, even intimidated.  The important thing, though, is to start.  Once you get going, sometimes you can’t seem to stop!  (Like now, for instance, lol.)

So you start writing, timidly at first, and then, you’re suddenly on a roll, and the words just seem to write themselves on the page, and before you know it, you look up, and the sun is setting, or your spouse asks you a question which you answer with a moronic ‘huh?’

It’s now 6:38 PM, and I am calling it quits for today, “today” being the operative word, of course.  Lol!