Now I have to go in and do the deep revising and this is not going well.
It's mostly the Inner Editor's fault, or, as I have named her, the Little Bastard. I call her that because she's small as a mustard seed and has a big mouth. Also, she's unfailingly unkind and evil. Just like everyone recommends, I manage to stuff her into a cage while writing. After all, I reasoned, it's only writing. Me in my little writing shed, no biggie.
But now that I'm revising, and will be sending the ms out, I've had to let the bitch out of the box.
A little while ago, Betsy Lerner had a post that started with the words "I want to vomit on myself." I know the feeling. It was basically a rant about how awful and useless you feel when you look at your own work. OK, maybe there's a writer or two out there that don't feel like that, but I haven't met any of them*. Everyone I know who writes goes through varying degrees of self-loathing while writing, regardless of experience, or success, and completely separate from any objective appraisal of the work.
For me, the self-loathing starts now. Fun.
Any ideas, suggestions and distracting techniques on how to get through this that doesn't include YouTube or eonline?
*And whether it's fair or not, I'm highly suspicious of anyone who doesn't hate their own work, at least some of the time.