I wrote the third part of my Shape Shifter series, CHANGE, two years ago but decided not to publish it until now. So with my hopes high I opened the file and started to read. Oh-oh! It was a total peace of garbage! So what now? Should I just publish it and hope I was the only one who hated it? Or should I swallow my pride and push the delete button? Gathering what was left of my pride I decided to re-write the whole story.
At first I asked few of my fellow writers to read some chapters and tell me what they thought about them. The feedback was quite positive and did cheer me up a bit so feeling quite bravely I sat down and ‘took the bull by its horns’. The first chapter was awful! And I mean downright awful. Unprintable. And so I was stuck with it. Until I gave up and moved on to chapter two. Wise decision. The second chapter was way better and so were the chapters after that. Good thing was that there were a lot of good in the story and I only did some minor corrections. I also lost myself to the story which is a sure sign for me that I didn’t write it for vain. The terrible thing was that all this rewriting process made me doubt myself as a writer and I could see a writer’s block knocking on my door. I’ve never suffered it and I’d like to keep it that way. So I pushed my fears away and just wrote.
After a week, I had almost five thousand words more than before! And the best part was that I was quite happy with my story. You’d think nothing could’ve wiped the smile from my lips. Wrong. There was still that dark cloud called chapter one. Now I’m printing the story, still ignoring the first chapter, and hopefully when I’ve read the whole thing once again my mind is clearer, and I can either shape that horrible chapter, delete it entirely or I’ve found some mysterious new idea that will make the chapter magnificent…
AUTHOR JENNIFER LOISKE 