Hot take for you today, guys. Editing is hard. Specifically, finding the motivation to edit is hard.

After watching the presentations for Adobe Max last week, I’m feeling super inspired and wanting to dive into something new! But I don’t really have something new to work on. Sure I’ve got some half baked snippets and characters floating around in my head. But my goal right now is to edit The Behemoth (you know, that manuscript I finished my first draft of back in May). But I just can’t get myself motivated to work on it.

It’s been basically half a year that I’ve been sitting on this manuscript and so far, I haven’t even finished a full read-through. I keep trying. I tell myself I’m going to. But then I sit down to do it, read a couple of pages, and get distracted by something else that’s more fun than boring old editing.

Hell, I revamped and edited an entire website this year for work, in the time I’ve put off editing my own work. (In retrospect, that is probably a contributing factor to why I’m struggling so much on my own work.)

Even coming up with ideas to write for this blog every week has been a struggle.

But, I’m trying to work on being kinder to myself, so instead of just feeling guilt and shame about what I haven’t accomplished, let’s instead look at the numerous factors making it harder for me to accomplish this goal at the moment and acknowledge that life is hard sometimes.

So, what’s stopping me from editing this project? Well. . .

Motivation Struggles:

This is sort of all all-encompassing issue at the heart of this problem. Every other factor plays into this, and this plays into every other factor.

I don’t know if it’s that my ADHD meds aren’t working as well as they used to (I’ve heard some unfortunate rumblings around the online ADHD communities about this being a larger-scale problem at the moment) or if it’s just the time of year, but it isn’t only my writing that’s suffering. Everything right now is more difficult than it used to be. From cleaning to feeding myself, I just can’t find enough motivation to go around. And so unfortunately, with what little motivation I do have a day to day basis, gets prioritized to the things that need to get done while hobbies and passions get pushed to the side.

Seasonal Changes:

There’s some obvious overlap here on the motivational factors, but Seasonal Affective Disorder is something I’ve struggled with since I was teen. Less light in the morning and less light at night leaves me feeling more sluggish. I experience huge drops in mood, and, as a consequence, so does my mood.

Ironically, this is my favorite time of year as far as weather and it’s a time where I really like to get out and do things. But when it comes to getting things done, it’s not a great time for me.

Overwhelming Workload:

Another stumbling block is the sheer volume of the work. This project is not only one of the largest works I’ve ever written, but I’ve recently realized that the manuscript is a mess. There’s at least two books in this book, and because I was largely feeling out the characters and the world as I wrote, the scenes often feel disjointed. The whole plot needs reworking or restructuring, and I need to look critically at what actually needs to be there and what perhaps is superfluous now that I’ve expanded the world more fully.

Which brings me to the next issue. . .

I Just Don’t Know Where to Start:

I find myself staring at the document, not knowing where to begin. Do I finish the read-through even though I feel like I can’t keep track of all of my thoughts and feelings about the text as I go? Do I start trying to restructure it from where I’m at, and chance that I’m forgetting something pertinent at the end of the text that will effect it?

Where does the book need to be cut for the second part to start? Are there even two distinct plots between the two halves? I know there’s enough content for two books, but I’m not so confident that they can both stand on their own.

With so many questions and unknowns, I’m struggling to find a way in. I can’t chunk out the project into individual tasks, and so I find myself even more overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude.

So what do I do instead?

Endless Preparation:

That’s right. Because I don’t know where to start and I’m feeling so overwhelmed by the project, I just . . . . work around the problem. I’ve been spending my time thinking a lot about editing or looking for prompts or worksheets that might magically solve all of these problems for me.

So on the outside, it might look like I’m making progress or that I’m at least working toward progress. But in reality, I’m just stalling.

Somewhere, deep down, I know that there’s no easy way through this. The work isn’t going to do itself. The manuscript isn’t going to edit itself. And there are no short cuts. I need to just. do it.

But that’s much easier said than done. And I’ll be honest, I don’t have any super-inspiring solution. I don’t know if I’ll come back to this blog in a couple of weeks to announce that I found a way through this block or if I’ll continue putting it off for another six months.

For now, I’m just working on being okay sitting with that feeling.