In praise of editing

For when the world changes.

I finished my first novel in 2017.

RIGHT? I still can’t really believe that’s a true sentence. Maybe because it kind of isn’t, in a way. I wrote the final scene and wrapped up all the ends tidily and got ready to move on to volume 2 of what I anticipate will be a big ole high-concept fantasy trilogy à la The Dark is Rising or The Prydain Chronicles or some of the other vast titans of my childhood library/literary life. But as pretty much every other artist before me has said, no project is ever truly FINISHED.

And nor is this one. I started it when I was 18, procrastinating writing papers my freshman year at NYU. And as I have grown and aged and different milestones in my life have come and gone, the story has shifted, altered ever so slightly with the new things I have learned and experienced.

I was content with my finished novel in 2017. I was querying agents and researching self-publishing and generally just working on getting the story out into the world.

And then I became a parent.

It’s wild how much writing a story about children and parents changes once you, The Author, flip from one side of that relationship to the other. Or, more accurately, add a role. I haven’t stopped being my mother’s child just because I’m mother now to a child of my own. But taking on this new position threw so, so many parts of that “finished” novel into sharp, discordant relief.

So I’m editing.

I’m back in the Scrivener trenches, changing all the little story beats that now seem both too trope-laden and too untethered to the emotional reality of parent-child relationships to stand. I’m usually a little leery of editing a thing to death, but these changes feel necessary. Vital to the lifeblood of this world and narrative I’ve created. So I’m making changes.

It seems fitting to do so, when all my world has changed.