Evolution

You may be surprised to see this again, after I’d taken it down yesterday, having already posted this month. But I will explain my reasons further down.

In terms of this post’s title, I’m not talking about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Instead, I’m talking about evolving as a writer. Every writer’s life becomes a journey in itself, and just as they grow as people, they grow as writers.

I’ve always struggled with perfectionism and getting things right, and it feels extremely frustrating when things turn out not to be perfect. This is true with writing. I felt bad as I discovered errors, typos, and flaws in published work, but I’ve also discovered that it is natural for typos to appear and gradually be fixed. It turns out that books can and have been changed post-publication. Even I had a preconceived notion that books are static once published. Now I know that’s not true. I’ve had to read more and more about how to use language, as I’ve discussed once before, such as when it comes to redundant phrases or even synonyms that are not always truly the same.

It’s like what Mark Twain said, that the difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. He was right. Now that I have another book, I have expected that the same process might happen all over again, but hopefully not to the extent it was with my first. One does indeed learn a whole lot with one book, just as one learns from attending conferences and conventions.

The simple truth is I care about my writing, and I am willing to invest my own time to making it better. It has felt like a ping-pong process going back and forth, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. But I’ve persevered through it. Persistence and patience, I know now, are essential. No writer should rush to publication. I also have learned and accepted that I don’t need to be perfect, perhaps more so than before. I am at peace with that.

Now, for the almost nine years that this site has been up, I have stuck to posting once a month. However, after mistakenly posting this yesterday, I had a bit of a mini breakdown. Anyone who knows me knows I’m on the spectrum, and thus I’ve always preferred patterns and routines, and leaving them has set me off. However, yesterday’s events were another reminder to me of how much anxiety I can have, and I’m happy to say that over the past year I’ve been able to break free of some patterns and overcome some preferences.

This is now one of them. I understand now that this pattern of once a month reached a point where it was controlling me, not me controlling it. Therefore, if I am to be more positive and less perfect, if I am to evolve as a person and a writer, it’s time to let go. So from now on, no longer always one post a month. Sometimes there will be more, maybe sometimes not. But I feel it is the right choice.

Further Reading5 Authors Who Edited Their Books After Publication5 Novels that Were Totally Changed Years After Publication