…I really do. Writing is one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy creating stories, characters, and worlds. It’s incredibly fun for me.

There is one thing about the writing process that I don’t like, however… editing. I hate editing. I know it’s necessary. I know it has to be done. I just hate doing it.

Some of it is that I don’t like finding mistakes. Obviously, I make mistakes. I know that. But finding mistakes that I’ve made can sometimes be frustrating. Especially if it’s something obvious, something that shouldn’t have been missed as I was writing it.

Another thing I don’t like about editing is that I’m not the best at it. While I consider myself above average, grammatically speaking, I’m not an expert. I don’t know all the rules about sentence or paragraph structure. Hell, most of what I know about writing is stuff that I’ve carried with me since elementary school and I’ve been told that even some of that is wrong.

I wish I had the money to be able to pay someone to do it all for me. Of course, if I could find an awesome person who enjoys editing and wanted to do it for free, that would be even better. I know I’m never going to get them perfect, but that’s never my goal. Attaining perfection is impossible. All I can do is go over the things I write and make them as good as I can. That way, good or bad, everything I write is me.

I started on a story project around two years ago. I wrote in it for a little bit, until it was around a quarter of how long I wanted to make it. Then, as so often happens with me, I had an idea for a new story. This new story was all shiny and sparkly, so I stopped writing the original story and focused on the new one. Eventually, I forgot about the original story.

After finally finishing my last project, I thought it would be best to go back and finish the story I had abandoned. But, because it had been so long since I wrote anything in it, I thought it would be best to read through it again before doing so. That way I could refamiliarize myself with the story, plus I could make any edits that I noticed needed to be made.

It’s a good thing I did. There were so many problems with the story.

There were two characters who somehow went from being people who met each other in adulthood, and just worked together, to being childhood best friends. Another couple of characters came across as being completely unlikable. I know not every character needs to be liked, but one of the unlikable characters was the main character. If they’re not likable, it generally means problems for the story. Plus, there were also a couple of unnecessary characters. While the extra characters didn’t really hurt the story, they really didn’t add anything to it either. In the end, it would be better off without them. And, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, the story itself was flawed.

That left me with two choices. I could either edit all the parts I didn’t like or start over completely. I didn’t like the latter because I’d be throwing away all the work that I’d put into it. Unfortunately, it was the only viable option. Trying to edit it would be impossible. Too much needed to be changed. By the time I’d get it to the way I wanted it, it’d be a completely different story anyway. Plus, editing it instead of rewriting it would be double the work.

So, as much as I hated doing it, I started over again. It sucks, but I’d rather do that than continue on with something I didn’t like.