Writer's Wednesday: Is Writing Fun?

I was chatting with a couple of young women the other day, and used the words "writing" and "work" in the same sentence. That got a reaction from one (another word geek) as she said something like, "but writing's fun!"

Thus this brief meditation on how fun writing is and sometimes isn't. Because while I can't think of anything I'd rather do, work-wise, there are times in the process when writing is, in fact, a great deal like work.

I've been editing Edited Out for what feels like ages, which might explain why just now I'm not thinking writing is the most fun work ever. Having spent two whole days just contemplating my shortcomings with regards to comma usage, I find myself wondering if I even know English well enough to write (note: it is my native language and really, I do. But commas!).

I figure it takes me about 6 weeks to draft a novel, and 6 months to revise it. Then I am astonished, every single time, to realize it takes another month or so to polish the prose. Some days I just don't want to do that. I want to say "good enough" and send it out into the world. But it's not good enough, because I do have the tools to make it better. So I keep going over the MS, keep tweaking sentences and eliminating redundancies.

Sometimes, that work is tedious. But you know what? Sometimes it actually is fun! Or, if not precisely fun, it's satisfying when I work over a sentence or paragraph and come out with something clearly better. 

As for Edited Out, the end is in sight! I have a tentative release date of August 4, though it's looking like that's going to slip back a couple of weeks... watch this space! Seffi's hard at work tending the plants at the Smelt Point Inn, and hunting down a killer.

 

Hoping the Smelt Point Inn is in better shape than this place!