Writing often comes easy to me. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I have notebooks from when I was a child, a teenager and a lost twenty year old filled with thoughts, ideas, poetry, song lyrics and stories.
What I have a problem with is change. Each time I edit, I rename my documents just so I don’t lose originality to change. I’m sure my hard drive and back up systems love that!
This week I’m facing a change challenge because I hate change, because I’m a bit OCD and when things are good, why rock the boat, and because what I might have to change, I fear, is core to my novel. But it’s out of my control. Control. I like control. I hate change. I like control. It’s simple, really, simple concepts make the world go round and when we complicate them, it’s just tougher to fit all the pieces together.
This novel has been sitting, in editing, for almost three weeks now.
And now I need to rewrite sections. Not because they aren’t good. But because of change.
I was at an author event for James Rollins a few days ago and he spoke about how he had to change pieces of his latest book during the publishing process because the world had changed. The science and discoveries in his book had grown as science does so quickly and his book needed to catch up to it all.
My book isn’t filled with science. It’s filled with music. It’s filled with love. It’s filled with loss. It’s a fight to get where we need to be in order to do it all again the next day. We are all fighting something each day. Some fight to get out of bed. Some fight to get into bed. Some fight to discover themselves along a journey that takes them to places they thought they’d never visit again.
Starting this week, I think I need to face change and discover if I can be happy with it all. Can I pull a song of self discovery out of the pain of the journey?
And welcome change….