Let’s be honest here…now that I’ve set a deadline for a “publishable” draft of my debut novel, I’ve crashed and burned. The first chapter of my book is in great condition it’s true, but the second chapter has me at a loss. I just don’t like how that writing is coming along. And if I don’t like the writing, how could I ever expect anyone else to either?

I bet my knowledge that this draft “has to be perfect” has contributed the largest to making my writing life miserable. You know, this is the first time in many years where NaNoWriMo hasn’t at worst gotten me writing every day for a few months thereafter. Instead I remain about one month behind my editing schedule (now that it’s the third of January, of course). And if you noticed, this is my first blog post in…exactly one month.

So what should I do? Any suggestions? As I began writing this, I realized I don’t have to edit my novel in order of chapters. I could jump around if I want to, but I had planned to work from start to finish on this draft. Maybe I just need to concede that while this draft will be a huge improvement on other drafts of the same story, it’s not going to be perfect. Am I suffering a form of writer’s block? Or is this more like…editor’s block?

Any ideas? How do you get past that fear of editing? When you’re trying to make a draft “publishable” (I’ll probably always put that in quotes because I know the term is misleading at least in my case), how do you overcome the needing to get things perfect?