Life has changed. It is very, very difficult to know how to talk about or enumerate all those changes – my last patreons only post goes into it – but even if my circumstances have changed, and continue to change while I find out what my new normal looks like, I’m managing to work on my edits for Aconite Braid again.
It is provisionally booked to go to the manuscript spa for a manicure and massage by Jon Oliver this month, and I’ve made the bulk of the changes I wanted to but I am going to use the time before then to put as much shine on this thing as I can.
There is a very weird element to perfectionist tendencies, to discard all imperfect efforts as worthless, and it’s a thing I have struggled a lot with. What I find really interesting about this edit process is that I’m managing to take the view that while I’d like to do better, while I’d like to improve what I have to bring it closer to my ideal of what the book should be, it’s still pretty good. I’m still exploring this but disconnecting my instinct that I can do better from the reflex to assume that means what I’m doing now is worthless could be very important for me. I think that’s one of the reflexes that sent me on my mental health crash.
Other than running up against perfectionism, making progress with the manuscript edits ahead of sending it off for developmental edits by Jon Oliver, and the shape of my personal life changing immensely? Things ain’t too bad.
There have definitely been bad days, frustration, some not so great attempts on my part where I try to push myself back to work as fast as I can, but I’m also making room for myself to fail and have lousy days – which makes the lousy days less lousy.
So, while I work to try and keep things over here in the butter zone of ‘ain’t too bad’, don’t forget to give yourself a little extra room for lousy days, look for places to be kind to yourself and hopefully make them a little less lousy.
As ever, thank you so much for your support. It means a lot, and I am really looking forward to one day reaching the point I can share this book with you properly.
