Trust Thy Editor
So now my story has a new title, and I've added a sentence and changed another so that I feel the title is appropriate for the whole story, and now ... now the anxiety is setting in. See, the problem is that this is a story I was able to write and revise in under a week. Then it sold. Then I re-read it. I almost always ignore a story for about a week before re-reading it to give myself some mental distance. Then I can spot all the quirks in the prose, the paragraphs where I use the same word over and over again, lines that just don't flow right, etc. But now the story's gone and I am still spotting those bits, and for about the past three days it's taken some considerable willpower to keep from emailing Julie in a semi-panic to beg to be allowed to fix all those things.
But I am not going to do that. Not only is it unnecessary, I think it would border on disrespectful. Julie has bought the story and she is editing it. She does not need me trying to jump back into the editing process. So I just need to take a deep breath and let it go. Trust thy editor.
It will help, I think, that I'm taking off for the weekend. I'm going to visit my cottage and go see some friends perform in a play and sleep a lot. And I'm not going to take my computer. So, for the next few days there will be no email or blogging or writing or endless games of solitaire. I am giving my poor carpy arms a total rest, in the hope that when I return I'll be ready to write. Deadline for the Asimov Award is approaching fast, and I have a lot of work to do before I'll have my submissions ready.
