Infinite Loops

I edit as I write sentences. I edit after I write a paragraph. I edit after I write a page. I edit after I write a chapter. I edit after I write five chapters. I edit when I'm suffering from writer's block. I edit when I feel like I should be doing something but am too lazy to write a chapter. I edit after I write ten chapters. I edit after I write fifteen chapters. From time to time I will sit down with my entire ms and read it straight through, with a red pen ready.

I find mistakes every time - embarrassing mistakes, mistakes I can't believe I made in the first place, awkward phrasing, typing errors, mistakes I wouldn't admit to my mother, mistakes that force me to frantically message those friends who have kindly offered to read the first draft and tell them to stop, right now.

It baffles the imagination. How did they get there? How, for heaven's sake, did they manage to squat there for weeks and months? Did they have camouflage?

Today, I lost 9k words in editing, out of an approximately 50k partial ms. Of those, 3,376 were a chapter I cut entirely (which will soon be gutted for parts). This means that I have lost an entire chapter of useless muck that I never should have written in the first place.

I dread opening my very first published book for the very first time to find a mistake on the first page. Not a typo or a printing error, no -- a genuine error on my part.

I have earned this today.