Editing, Mom Guilt, and Hard Things
In AJ Harper’s book, Write a Must Read, she shares a quote about parenting from the movie Terms of Endearment: “As hard as you think it’s going to be, you end up wishing it were that easy.” I completely agree. So I knew to believe her when she went on to say that the quote also applies to editing a book.
I’m currently in my first round of heavy editing, (although I think this may already be draft 11?), and I feel like it is making me question, not just everything I’ve written, but all of my life choices. Okay, I exaggerate… but only slightly. The interesting thing about editing is that you need to put yourself in a very different state of mind from writing. When you write your Shitty First Draft (also wow is my life coming full circle because I first read this when I was 16 and it’s stuck with me since, and now the book that it’s from, Bird by Bird, is on my bedside table?), you have to be your world’s biggest cheerleader, completely baby yourself, and coax out anything and everything that your creative self may produce. But when you’re editing, you need to sift through all of the crap, delete everything of no value to the reader, and consider every which way that your writing may mislead, confuse or not serve your reader. It becomes easy then, for this hypercritical eye to bleed into your life. And as a mom, there’s always something I can be doing wrong. Are they eating enough vegetables? Am I spending enough time with them? Is it selfish for me to be working on a book when they are this little and never will be again? Am I traumatizing my two year old when I say no to carrying him all day when it hurts my back? Should I even be wasting time editing this book when it most likely isn’t going to take off anyway? Is this chapter useless?
Since moving about a month ago, I’ve had less time to work on my book, and we of course decided to squeeze in a ten day trip to England to see family–a trip we’ve been meaning to take for a while, and one we won’t be able to take for a bit again once the new baby arrives. On our flight home (on which I type this), one seat was away from the others. My husband, despite being in a very busy work period himself, suggested I take that seat so I can have some peace, and edit. I found this offer very hard to accept, even though I wouldn’t blink if he took that seat. Thoughts swirled through my head: He’s the breadwinner. His work actually matters. The kids need me on the flight. He will be so uncomfortable sitting alone with them. Am I even going to get any valuable editing done?
Well, we land in an hour. I’ll probably finish writing this, and I have done a pass through of a few chapters. Something got done. Did I do enough? Did I earn sitting alone? Can I talk myself out of the fact that I don’t need to earn sitting alone on a flight? These thoughts remind me of Dr. Nathaniel Branden’s definition of self-esteem:
“Self esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life, and as being worthy of happiness. Thus, it consists of two components: (1) self-efficacy–confidence in one’s ability to think, learn, choose, and make appropriate decisions, and (2) self-respect–confidence that love, friendship, achievement, success–in a word happiness–are natural and appropriate.”
From my experience, a lot of moms (and perhaps women in general) struggle with the latter part. It seems obvious that others (and perhaps men in general) are deserving of these things, but questionable that we do. This reminds me of a time a co-worker of mine who started working out in the mornings and thus couldn’t take earlier shifts explained to me that she needed to workout, as otherwise her body suffered aches and pains. Sure, this is possible. But I wish wanting to work out could be enough, and needing to wasn’t required justification.
Whenever we justify our wants to others, we are emphasizing to ourselves and others that we cannot do things just because we want to. I couldn’t take the separate seat because I wanted to. There needed to be justification, or I needed to earn it. I have certainly made strides here, but the airplane incident showed me there was work to be done.
Finally, I’ll round this post out by announcing that I like doing hard things. Parenting, editing… bring on the hard things. I like other things too. Jigsaw puzzles, a walk, and recently I’ve become curious about identifying flowers, but there is just something that feels so good when you’ve done a hard thing.
