It’s just not right. You think you’re done with a story. You’re proud. You’ve accomplished something. Then you go back to bask in your achievement.

     Only, you realize it needs something.

     So you tweak.

     Then you move a paragraph.

     Then you change the storyline.

     Next thing you know, you’re in a full re-write.

     I must admit, this is rather foreign territory to me. In news, the explanatory copy and sound bites/quotes have a general sensical order, to be expressed clearly and in few words. Even if I had hour after hour to rewrite, which I don’t, the order of events doesn’t change drastically. What happened, happened in a certain way. I can change how I approach or back into the story, but getting too creative in the mere minutes that I have to tell a story can hamper understanding.

     Writing fiction, though, isn’t at all like that. The story’s yours, obviously, so you can order events however you’d like.

     And you do.

     Ad nauseum.

     I’m finding that when I have no deadline, I keep going back and “tweaking” a story, and I wonder if I’ll ever be happy with it.

     Do you walk away? Do you say “good enough is good enough?” Or do you keep tweaking because you have no deadline? In the end, the goal is the best piece of writing you are capable of producing. The problem is, that line keeps moving as your writing experience evolves.

     I’m working on my next book now. It’s a language-focused picture book. Doesn’t sound cute, but it is. The trouble is, I’m writing two versions and can’t decide which I’m liking better. One is simple prose. The other is written in rhyme. I’m hoping that by the time I’m done, one will stand out as the clear favorite, because, as it stands now, I’m pulled two ways.

     When I was a child, I loved reading verse. I adored the rhythm of the read, and the more I read, the more I remembered, to the point that I could eventually recite the whole poem or story without referring to the page.

     On the other hand, prose feels less stifling to me. I feel better able to express myself, within the same space, because I’m not forcing words to fit a particular rhythm.

     This book, apparently, really wants itself written. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be demanding it twice.