writerjenn

I have been revising.  And revising, and revising, and revising.  I am in the middle of editing a novel, and I am working on a couple of short stories.  Each project provides a nice break from the others.  When I can't take one of them any more, I switch to another.

One byproduct of the revision process is doubt.  A paragraph that sparkled when I first wrote it seems, upon the 15th rereading, to have lost its magic.  I become convinced that these characters I love will evoke nothing but yawns from  the rest of the world.  Even if the story ideas are good, am I doing them justice?  Did I find the right ending?  It's hard to tell if this is clear-eyed criticism or just fatigue.  

The inner critic helps identify trouble spots.  The inner critic tries not to let me get away with crap.  The inner critic keeps me working when I might get lazy.  But sometimes, one must stuff a pillow in the inner critic's mouth and listen to the story.  

I'm at a point in the novel where the characters are giving me some new answers.  I've uncovered a couple of layers that I didn't know about during the last draft.  About my best work, I tend to have the eerie feeling that I didn't write the story, it wrote itself.  My first duty is to get out of the way.