I have made some major changes in my life and they appear to be more routine than I had initially believed they would be. They are affecting many areas of my life and I like it. I have started exercising regularly. I am in a contest with friends to lose weight – we have been doing this for going on 3 years, I think. With little success, so this year I created a much bigger challenge for all of us who wanted to participate which is building a savings account for a trip. Only those who lose 10% of their weight in 10 months are able to go with the monies saved. I have every intention of being one of those people and so I stepped it up. I was not doing well for the first half of the challenge – so I looked at my weight and the things I have done for most of my adult life and what has worked and what has not. I want this to be the last time I am focused on losing weight. The main thing was exercise. So I started with ½ hour a day and it is working. In the first 15 days, I lost something like 7 inches of fat. So I am keeping it up, along with a journal focus of my weight loss and the activities I am trying and doing.
I did not realize how much more energized I would feel. It has helped in keeping me more motivated and active. Now, the bummer is that I have spent less time at the computer actually writing. This is not okay. I am really frustrated by this.
I have to admit that some of my struggles are coming in the form of editing. Even when I get the stuff down and on paper, I review and edit, review and edit to the point that I believe it is ready to start submitting. A few months ago, I submitted a story of mine that I thought was ready to go. A friend is helping with the editor position for stories to be read on a radio station, and I found one that I had writing which could be read online. It had been published in a literary journal and at an online journal. I thought cool – this is the one to go with. When I first read it to my writers group – I was complimented on the voice and the story. There were a few changes that I now realize I had not made before submitting it, but overall the story was enjoyed by my peers. This friend was one of those peers – the story was returned to me and edited as a ‘favor’. I honestly do see it as a favor as it she was trying to be very helpful in what needs to be in place before submitting. I admit to feeling crushed – there were so many marks the original story was hard to find. Now there were some actual errors that I was glad to have pointed out to me, but then there were things that I don’t agree with. Which is alright as well – everyone is entitled to their opinion – yet, I wondered, how did it get accepted at these other places if there were so many errors. I am still a little confused by this. I have not looked at it for awhile because I honestly found it a little depressing.
Now I am trying to edit a couple of my stories for submission – one of which I think has a really good change at this on-line magazine which accepts some horror stories – and even though there is no truly gory details, it is violent. I am now not confident in my editing skills and am worried that I am letting one persons edit affect my own editing. It took me awhile to realize this, so I think I am going to simply do it the way I know how and submit. I am, however, looking for options – 1. Who do you get to edit your pieces before submitting? 2. How do you know when you have edited too much?
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