Editing is Hard

When I wrote the first version of my novel, the main difficulty of getting the words on the page was being able to find the time to write. Once I had the time, it was always fairly easy to sit down and let the story flow out.

Editing that version was perfectly straightforward as well. I had a sheet of paper where I had each chapter written along with a short description, and as I wrote the story, I would jot down by a certain chapter something that needed to be added or changed as the story developed. I didn't have any major points that needed to be changed, and a good deal of my editing was noticing that I used the one word too frequently in such and such a paragraph and changing it so it was no longer repetitive.

Now I'm doing a major, enormous edit. Creating my novel 2.0 is a lot harder than making it the first time.

I'm changing it from being a dual perspective book to being only from the grown-up's point of view. It makes for a much better book.

I am still including a good chunk of the other perspective, at least that was my plan. Yet I just finished writing the first chapter incorporating that perspective and I've been mulling it over ever since.

I have an entire half a book's worth of writing from this other point of view, and I had been aware that I would of course have to cut out parts of it to make it work. But now that I've written this one chapter incorporating the previous story line, it just isn't going to work. I don't mean the entire notion, but how I had pictured it.

If I include as much from this point of view as I had planned to, it is going to be too much. There won't be enough time for the main character to figure things out without it weighing down the plot.

So I'm going to have to really sit down and figure out how to do this. I'm going to have to cut out a lot of things I had planned to include, and I'm going to have to find a way for it to flow well with this new change. A lot more is going to have to change than the half a story I had originally thought.

And I'm not sure where it'll end up. I don't know how this book is going to end, now. The last chapter was from the child's perspective, and I can't find a good way to wrap that up. Not that I'm anywhere near the end of the story.

Editing is a lot harder when it's a huge shift like this. I just need to remember that this will make my book so much better. It may be a struggle to work though it at times, but this new version will be a great improvement on the old.

It's just hard to throw out so much that I've put my heart into, even with the knowledge that I'm making it better.