Revision Depression

I love to write. It's something I've always wanted to do, ever since I was a little girl.

I just don't like to do revisions. Editing has never been my favorite thing.

Revisions depress me.

I have a bunch of lovely people who beta read stories for me and go through and edit them for me, but the story revisions are always on me. I'm my own editor, which means it takes twice as long for the novel to go from first draft to ready for print. That means I have to go through it two or three times to check for problems with grammar, continuity, and just tightening sentences and making the plot better.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only writer who gets depressed when it comes to revisions. I mean, sometimes I get sick of the same story over and over. Even though I love these characters and they're part of me, I get tired of having to go back and read the same story over and over and over. Maybe it's because I know the details of their lives that go on between the scenes that are shown to the reader. Or maybe it's because I've lived with this story for years. But it gets boring after two or three revision read throughs when I have to pay such close attention to everything.

To deal with it, I have to plan things out so that I have at least a month between revisions so that I can "forget" things about the story and go back to them with new eyes. That's the only way I can avoid the frustration that leads to the horrible depression that makes me feel like I can't work on the story anymore. That's what happened with my first novel. I got so bored with the story that I haven't worked on it in four years.

Perhaps I should go back to it to help break up the monotony of the series that I'm working on right now. It might just help.