After the Drafts of Summer Are Gone

It is no easy, or particularly fun task to self-edit your own writing.  It's that first time you look at all the sand you shoved in the sandbox and realize that now you actually have to make something with it.  With this mess.  A beautiful mess, for sure, but still a mess.

I may or may not have mentioned it before, but I am currently in the process of working toward self-publishing a collecting of 28 children's short stories for you and the rest of the world love and devour ( because you will, of course, finger crossed ).  I have done 7 stories for each of the four seasons, and now all 28 of those rough drafts are staring at me, judgmentally, almost, waiting for me to stop procrastinating with everything else I don't really need to be doing and turn them into 1st drafts.

I got a whole boat load of writing done in March, then took a month off from writing to give my eyes a break from staring at these stories, and then I had planned to do all the rough draft editing in May.  Easy peasy, right?

Well now it's July and I'm just over half way through them all.  They're still staring at me, and I've begun to stare back, or just ignore them all for as long as possible.  But this method isn't going to get me published by summer next year.  Especially since I have do all my own illustrations, too, and I haven't even begun with that task yet ( I'm not actually good a drawing, you see ).

I am happy to say though that I am staring to get out of this editing slump and get some real work done.  I have all the first drafts for the first season, Summer, done and filed away for me to work into my files on my computer once I finish the other seasons.  Fall is nearly done, and all Spring really needs is some expanding.  Winter is going to be the most challenging.  I have found that at least 2 of my winter stories are no longer to my liking.  

That's going to take me some extra time, having to come up with 2 new stories before I can even start editing them, and I'm not sure how much winter inspiration I can find in the middle of summer.  Perhaps I'll just have to finish all the other drafts, then work on my drawings for a while, till winter comes back around and I can write those winter stories that I need.

I'm just going to celebrate the completed Summer first drafts for now and try not to glare at myself for all the procrastination that I did over the past two months.  The drafts of summer are gone, and it's time to keep moving forward toward the end of my goal.

Em