Another Lesson Learned Again

     As I've mentioned here several times, I am in the middle (literally) of revising - hopefully for the last time - my second book. And a few weeks ago, after it was going along smoothly and, to my great relief, needing no more than minor corrections, revisions and edits, I hit a big snag. It was one section, but in it I manged to have no less than four problems with the plot line. They weren't huge issues, but they were connected and each was big enough that finding a solution was daunting. So I struggled for weeks, picking at it, thinking, debating and brainstorming - but not actually dealing with it.
     This is so familiar. If you read my post mentioning my experience with revising my first book, you know this has happened to me before, more than once. And my way to handle it, or not, is to worry about it so much that I don't want to face it and refuse to actually work on it until I have a perfectly clear idea in my head about what I'm going to do. This rarely works. Maybe never works.
     On at least three occasions in the last weeks, I opened the document, looked at my notes, my questions, the troubled part of the manuscript and then gave up in frustration. But I'm a writer and we can't not write. So I refused to let myself go on to another project and just kept worrying over the current one. And a couple days ago, I again sat down with the scrambled parts of my book, my notes and my questions and...bingo! Just reading over the same things again, this time I knew the answer to not just one question, but how to fix all the snags that had created a snarl in my work. And in ten minutes, it was smoothed out and the way is cleared for me to continue my revisions.
     Here's the lesson I have to keep learning and feel I have to keep passing it on: The problem didn't get fixed by ignoring it. It didn't get fixed by thinking about it while doing something else (although that sometimes works for many people and I am in favor of trying it). I didn't get fixed the first time I studied and read over and cussed at it. Or the second time I struggled with it. Or the third...but then I conquered it. And I probably could have done so sooner and not missed three weeks of valuable time if I hadn't avoided it because I was frustrated and insecure.
     Here's the lesson, again: Perseverance is essential. Insecurity is the enemy (though not the only one). Write every day, persist in your writing even when it's hard and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, sit down at the computer and face your WIP demons. They will not go away or suddenly conquer themselves if you ignore them. If you keep at it, you will succeed.

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