This past Wednesday, I was delighted to have another mentoring session with Gabriela Pereira, the instigator of DIYMFA.com. I came into this session, having hit what felt like a wall in my revision. I was trying to iron out a late scene and things were just not coming together.
So we took a step back and Gabriela asked where I was, what my goals were, and then turned my idea of how I was trying to revise my story on its head.
I had been going through the revision pyramid, but she straight up told me to not even bother with the top part of the pyramid before sending it to my first set of beta readers. In fact, she shoved me back down on the pyramid, reminding me of the basics that I had sort of glazed over. She also told me I did not need to polish nearly as much as I thought I should, before sending my story to beta readers.
Somewhere in my mind I assumed I wanted the book to be nearly publishable before I had any beta readers read it, but she made me realize that I needed to get outside input before I worked so hard on the stuff I had that might change. Again, I knew this… but I was thinking about wrong.
So suddenly I had a new direction, and I was feeling light again, and it took me a few days to realize why I was feeling so good.
Gabriela reminded me that the story did not have to be perfect.
So all at once, I stopped beating myself up about the fact that I couldn’t make everything work. I could just stop and focus on the things that I could do. I am going to continue learning my whole life. I am never going to be that idealized “perfect” that sits in that corner of my brain to taunt me. It is good, sometimes, to be reminded that I am perfect exactly where I am.
