(In)Tense under pressure.

I’m in the middle of edits for The Book and so far it’s been eye opening on so many levels.

It isn’t hearing ‘we don’t like this’, or ‘this needs to be changed’ that I have trouble with – that’s to be expected; it’s the deadlines.  In my normal job, I deal with deadlines every single day.  Every episode.  Some of the deadlines that I was faced with, I didn’t think I could meet while giving what I knew was needed to the script.  While most of the time, I just sucked it up and worked 7 days a week and did it because it had to be done, some were truly inhuman.  I count my blessings that I worked with a production team who listened when I said, ‘I need more time.’.  And I usually got it because they knew if I was asking, I needed it.

This is not so when dealing with publishing I’m finding.  Deadlines are deadlines and you must do it.  Full Stop.  Not what I was expecting when I know I could do better given different parameters.  Maybe I just am in deadline overload still.  I don’t know. Regardless, I’m getting it done.

Within these edits, I’ve had to change the tense of the book.  Again, this isn’t surprising as it was a stumbling block I was facing going through it on my own and knew it was an issue going in.  What I’m finding so surprising is that even though I’m writing this in past tense, when writing new material, my tense slips back into my comfort zone – present tense.  I have to go through and read, adjust, reread, adjust something I’ve missed and then read again word by word to make sure I’ve corrected what needs to be changed. It’s not my natural voice for writing.  I’m trying to work quickly, but it feels like it’s taking me 10 times longer because of the freaking tense.

If I had more time, I’d probably do the re-writes in my voice, get the words and story adjustments out faster and adjust it all to the tense required later.  Unfortunately, on this one, I don’t have that luxury.  So instead of getting uber-frustrated, (okay, I still get frustrated, just temper it with the following), I’m treating it like one big writing exercise.  Not *quite* how you want to approach something going to print, but it’s all I’ve got.

I think the story is going to be better because of the changes.  I really do. I just hope I can do the reworks justice.

:: goes back and rereads to correct tense issues that most definitely will exist ::