Braving the Edits

Because we aren't here to half-ass life.

A few weeks ago, I sent the first half of my memoir manuscript to a freelance editor. Two days ago, she sent the edits back to me, along with a letter summarizing her thoughts. Her thoughts on my manuscript. My manuscript which is basically my past, present, heart, and soul poured out onto more pages than I ever thought I could—or would—write. No biggie.

I read her letter when it arrived, my heart ardently attempting to pound its way out of my chest. Her feedback: it’s good, relatable, blah blah, but not good enough. Must go deeper. Must enrich your characters—particularly those that you were hoping to keep on a surface level in order to ease their comfort (and yours), considering that they are, in fact, real people, including the two who created you and the one you married.

Crap.

I took a deep breath and opened the manuscript doc. And there was red. A LOT OF RED. And highlights. And margin comments. So, so many margin comments.

Crap.

Fortunately, yesterday was Halloween—the perfect excuse to keep my laptop closed all day. Instead of braving the edits, I:

• Walked two of my dogs (the gimpy one and the freshly spayed one) for 20 minutes

• Walked the third dog (the hound who looks more like a horse) for an hour

• Did a Peloton rowing class on our rowing machine

• Worked at the fitness studio

• Stayed past the end of my shift to make sure every single towel was folded (which was completely unnecessary)

• Picked up my son (who was dressed as a hot dog) from school and took him to the orthodontist

• Dropped my son back off at school

• Got an oil change

• Filled my car up with gas

• Chatted with a friend until my son came home from school and Halloween havoc commenced

Procrastination complete!

But the manuscript still haunted me anyway.

I haven’t even read the edits yet, except for a few peeks. But based on what the editor says in her letter, I know she’s right.

Crap.

I know I am going to have to go deeper. Share more. Maybe dig up a few more anecdotes from my life that will make me very comfortable to remember, much less share.

But the power in writing my story is bringing the dark stuff into the light. Because in shining my light, I reclaim my power. And that is what has made this process so profoundly healing already. Even if I haven’t done enough. It’s incredibly daunting to know that I have to keep digging. But I also know that the deeper I go, the more I will find to expose to the light, and the more I will heal and grow.

I’m sharing all of this to help myself stay brave. I’ll send this post out this morning, and just knowing it’s sitting in a bunch of inboxes will compel me to boss up and start reading through 94 pages of red lines, highlights, and margin comments.

But I also share this to help you stay brave. You may not be writing a memoir like I am, but maybe you have something else going on in your life where you wish you could be satisfied with half-assing it, because that would be a hell of a lot easier—but you know that’s not who you are. Even though it’s going to be harder to dig deeper, or move through instead of skirting around, or making the hard choice instead of copping out, you can and you will do the thing you know is the thing you need to do.

And when you do, you will feel so proud of yourself. But beyond that, you will feel TRUE to yourself. Doing hard things helps us reinforce the connection to our real, unedited, authentic selves. And that connection is everything.

So let’s keep believing, my friends. Let’s keep choosing hard. Because that means we are choosing US.