Tinkering

The only way to learn to write is to write. — Peggy Teeters

I'm beginning to believe that nothing a person works on is ever TRULY finished. No matter how many times I sit back and look at that store page, the book on the other side of the cover keeps whispering to me: "But wait, there's just one more thing for you to fix!"

Whether it's removing page numbers in my TOC, updating the copyright information, including cover art in the file, adding a Dedication page, you name it, I never seem to be satisfied with it for long. It feels like an obsession some nights, as I stay up for ungodly hours just to change the tiniest thing. The process is never-ending.

Now this is all good practice for the next books in line, and I'm excited by the opportunities that are coming up in the future for me, but it's hard to be patient with myself when I'm just rehashing old content to tweak the tiniest bit in order to "make it a little bit better." Nothing seems to be the death of my productivity like a perfectionist's streak and the weird, quasi-OCD I find myself in as I keep making "just one more change."

That being said, I'm not so sure that it's a real bad habit to have. If I put a book up for sale that was filled with spelling and formatting errors, forgot to include the right bookmarks and page links, or just was sloppy all around, who would take me seriously? I've (mostly given away) hundreds of copies of this thing, and people can be cruel if they want to be. Once they find one thing they don't like, they won't give me the time of day ever again because of ONE bad experience.

So the thing to remember is not that always wanting to tinker with a finished product is bad. The thing to remember — for me, anyway — is that I can't excuse away not working on new writing just because a finished book needs some slight changes here or there.

And now that I think about it, there might be some other things I need to fix. Excuse me.