Death By Editing.

I have been thinking about this for a while now.  Writing, like life, is a process.  We all struggle with putting our ideas into motion, or sometimes even on paper.  I have asked myself the question why?  Why is it I cannot seem to let my story flow?  Simply put, my story has died more times than a cat has lives by the hand of editing.  I edit it to death.  I hack every sentence, question every idea, reformulate every possible direction until I have written half a book but actually only come up with barely a chapter.  And, that chapter has no where near the purity it started with.  Again, I edit it to death.  This is not to say that editing does not have a place, but when editing replaces writing, pure thought, pure emotion, then it is a problem.  I struggle with this in my writing and in life.

I have begun to ask myself, what else do I edit to death?

I edit myself.  The me the world sees is only a glimpse of the real person inside.  I think if we are all honest with ourselves this true for most of us.  However, by doing this are we editing ourselves to our own soul's death.  How long can you edit to the outside world who you are till that is who you become on the inside? Are the best and most beautiful parts of who we are edited by use of fear, self-loathing, insecurity, and are we not the authors of this editing?   And, do we as the ultimate story tellers not hold this power in our hands and let it happen, or worse make it happen? I think more and more we do.  I think more and more we become less of the authors of our stories and more of a sub-character, or even at times the villain who works against the story itself.

And yet...

Editing can also be a force for good.  Because we can edit, we can also take out the bad.   Through editing, we can identify those things that may not be working and take them out, restructure them, or improve upon them to make a story better.  This is true in life, except I think we see it more as self-evaluation.  However, self-evaluation is just another way to edit.  We can change.  We can grow.  We can learn, and it all starts with being willing to edit.  Edit out the bad, accept the good, and don't edit out who you are in the process of life.  Discover who you can become instead.

I think if I can accept this in my life, I can start to accept it in my writing, and then maybe the core of the real story of my book, and life, will find me in the process.