Where We Are / by Kenneth Buff

So summer's here. As a teacher (and stay at home parent...I'm currently both 🤷) that's always nice. The last three years we've always moved (to another state) when summer came around, so it's nice to finally be able to basically enjoy this one. Well, mostly. Both Miranda and I will still be taking summer classes to get fully certified up here in Kansas, and we're hoping to buy our first home and move into it, but, other than that, we're basically lounging, doing what teachers are supposed to do during summer once they're seasoned (of course we'll be looking-up strategies, curriculum, and re-designing our classrooms throughout the summer, so 🤷).

With all that said I still plan to get my post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, MOON, out this summer. I've got it in my head what I want to do with it in the rewrite, and I'm ready to steamroll through it once I feel like I can. Typically I finish my works in progress (currently 50k into another novel titled Little NoisesI) before I move onto another, but writing has been slow going for me lately. There's been a lack of motivation for various reasons, and now I'm trying to decide if I want to finish Little Noises first, pushing my self hard to complete it quickly while maintaining quality, or do I want to push pause on it and instead focus on getting MOON rewritten and then rewritten again, and then edited, and then published.

That sounds like a lot, but when I'm rewriting/editing, I'm flying. I work tirelessly on whatever book I'm rewriting for hours every single day until it's done. And then when it's done I read it on my Kindle for another two–three days, writing down all the typos I catch, phrases that need changed, etc., and then if I make major changes I load it back up into my Kindle and I do it again. So, yeah, I'm vary thorough now when it comes to editing (and this is after I've already had the first draft edited, which I then use during my rewrite to get all the problem areas fixed as well as the original typos).

I think I'm currently going to keep working on Little Noises, trying to hammer out as much as possible this next week, and then decide the following week if I want to hit the pause button and jump head on into rewriting, editing, and then publishing my next novel. It's a tough decision, because I really love editing and rewriting. It gives you a clear structure that you don't necessarily have when you're writing the first draft. You have a goal that's easier to measure (take this work that already exists and make it good instead of just 🤷) and it's easy to create a workflow that doesn't feel grinding, but rather inspiring. When you're writing the first draft there are major highs and lows. Sometimes you think the writing is going amazing, other times you think it's complete shit. But unfortunately you have to finish it, regardless of how you're feeling, or how good or bad the actual writing really is (your feelings are not the best measure of this. Your eyes days later when your emotions are separated from the words are).