The knitters among you will know about the second sock syndrome. See, what happens – for me at least – whenever you knit stuff that comes in pairs, mittens, socks, matching sweaters… (Just kidding, I don’t knit matching sweaters. And I totally don’t make my partner wear them on pain of getting locked up in the basement either. No one has seen him for a few days cause uh… Look at that!) In any case, whenever you’re knitting something in pairs there’s a huge chance that the second mitten will get ignored in favor of…. Well pretty much everything.
Editing is kind of like that for me. If I’m really honest, more than kind of. I’m not very good at it for a start but that’s not all of it. I have an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship to it. I know, intellectually, that editing will make my stories better, but on a practical level I keep finding other things to do. Which, also on a practical level means that I have a bunch of deeply flawed stories that need to be edited before they can be sent out just languishing on my hard drive, hoping for me to make the time to edit them.
And I’m starting to think that it’s the second sock syndrome all over again. The project is not complete without the second part but since it’s kind of treading ground already trodden, I can’t seem to make it happen. Which is weird because I certainly have no problems walking the same paths every day or rereading my favorite books over and over and over again. But when it comes to my own creative projects? Not so much.
Anyone else have this same problem?
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