Starting Over

Whew! I just finished a whirlwind frezy of edits for my April 15th release, Darkness Seduced. The book came out fantastic, and I'm so excited. After I finished, I found myself wanting to sashay around my office with a bottle of champagne to toast my awesomeness.

I rode that delicious high for about ten hours, until I got up the next morning and started to work on my next book. The first draft of Darkness Surrendered is already written, so all I need to do is revise it. Easy peasy, right? Well, not so much.

See, what I sat down to start editing it, it was sort of like a gigantic wet noodle slapping me in the face repeatedly. The problem is that the first draft of a new book can't hold a candle to the highly polished and honed final draft of a book. As I started to read the opening chapter, all my elation whooshed out of me and I thought, "Ye Gods, how am I EVER going to make this book as good as the one I just finished???"

I had a bit of a panic moment, and then I recalled feeling that exact same way when I started editing Darkness Seduced, after having finished up Darkness Awakened. And, I'd had the same feeling when I started editing Darkness Awakened, after having finished up Chill. (Is anyone seeing a pattern here?)

It made me remember that all great things and accomplishments don't start out great. At some point, every brilliant and amazing creation was in a raw, unfinished and apparently hopeless stage, no matter how good it turned out. So, it was a great reminder to be easy on myself whenever I'm starting a new project. They always turn out okay, no matter how tough the road seems at the start. So, yeah, the lesson of the day: allow yourself to start from scratch and to enjoy the process of seeing the brilliance emerge over time...