On becoming Woody Allen

I am, sort of, in "rewrites." My book is over 80% complete but I have hit a little road block inside my summer vacationing mind (thankfully, I write nonfiction so it does not need to be complete for publishers just yet). SO, instead of doing nothing, I am editing. My agent is a former editor who has a keen eye for critique, which I appreciate. I am fully aware that I am a grammatical nightmare (and was distressed to discover that a regular blog reader is an English teacher!) but that doesn't bother me too much. Grammar can be fixed by someone who does good at it. The rest of the process, however, creates painful and severe self-indulgent neurosis.

My friend, Susan Isaacs, just completed her first book, "Angry Conversations with God" and wrote this post on her blog about her current state of mind. While reading her most depressing thoughts, I found myself envying the writer adrenaline she refers to and wondering, "Where the heck is mine?" Sick.

Then I stumbled upon this quote by British novelist, Zadie Smith:

"When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second -- put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year of more is ideal -- but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can't tell you how many times I've sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go on stage and read from them. It's an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your novel is two years after it's published, ten minutes before you go on stage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all of the pieces of dead wood, stupidity, vanity, and tedium are distressingly obvious to you."

I began writing this crazy group of words last October in the midst of a most trying moment. The book didn't start out to revolve around that struggle, and it still doesn't revolve around any one moment, but the journey back to sanity found its way into my work and became a dominant theme. In other words, I did not set out to write the book that I have written, which I suspect may be a good thing because the original idea is still there to be nurtured. Unless this first one kills me.

Inviting God into this fray is proving interesting. Even though the book is essentially about Him, and certainly for Him, I am tempted to believe that I need to cling to all this angst in order to write at all. Does that make sense? So, God and I are currently in "faith/trust/Who defines you?" negotiations.

But today, I will dive right back in and trip over my insecurities and self-doubt - all to look at Chapter One once again.