Writing a Novel is an Accomplishment... Seriously

So today I was scrolling through Twitter (procrastinating on editing), and I saw a quote from  Rose Tremain on the Twitter page +TheUnNovelist .... Great page, by the way, check it out for sure.

The quote was as follows: "The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all." ~Rose Tremain

Let that sink in. It seems simple on the surface, but this quote really blew me away and I'll tell you why. 

I spent about a year seriously focused on writing this manuscript after spending a couple of years casually working on it, after years of letting this idea wander through my brain, developing into a complex story over the years. This has been a long time coming.

And now that it's actually done, I'm consumed by the editing and rewriting process. In some ways, it's just as hard as actually writing, and in other ways it's easier, but it requires a lot of work all the same. 

It's so easy for me, and maybe for some of you, to get caught up in how crappy I feel like my writing is. Oh, this scene is terrible, why is that dialogue so corny, why am I so bad at writing, etc. It's abnormally easy to worry about everything I did wrong and trying to fix it that I forget something so simple:

I wrote a book.

I have a 75,000+ word Scrivener file on my computer that entirely came out of my head, that I painstakingly typed out. 

It's written. It's out of my head and onto paper computer screen. 

And that's an accomplishment.

Sure, maybe that chapter is really poorly written, but it's written. Maybe this manuscript is really disorganized because I refused to outline, but it actually exists to be disorganized. Maybe that character isn't developed well, but that character has been taken out of my head and put into words.

The reason I have all these problems with my manuscript is because I have a manuscript. 

So even though that quote is so simple, I found it exceedingly encouraging.

So if you've written a manuscript, if you've even written just one paragraph of a manuscript, that's something worth celebrating. You conjured a new idea out of your head and put it into words. 

And if that isn't the most legit thing you've ever heard of, I don't know what is. 

Actually writing a manuscript is very impressive. Don't get so lost in your rewriting that you forget that.

KMG