Tightenville

To be blatant, I have always believed that working on my "story" on a full-time basis would be my "career." I've always striven to be willing to accept work and jobs in the interim between conceptualization and monetization of the IP I have generated and I have always hoped this work would provide for my family (since that is an absolute responsibility and not a negotiable one). Lately, our financial instability has made me question this unwavering belief. That's a summary, probably anyone who is reading this is well aware of my position and what has transpired.

I recently experienced an unexpected result of this upheaval though, and that's what I am now writing to mention. Due almost entirely to the sense of uncertainty in our life right now, I felt it necessary to trust someone - something I am not accustomed to doing. I trusted them by sharing the overview of my story as a whole - something I have not done with anyone other than Esther. This was difficult for me in two ways: 1) it was challenging to attempt to encapsulate all of the ideas I have been trying to tie together for the past twenty years into one cohesive, short and easy-to-understand storyline (for the most part, I failed miserably at this task) and 2) it was nerve-wracking to submit my ideas to a third party for judgement, especially considering the investment I've made with my life into trying to turn this endeavor into a career.

Trusting someone is hard enough, but adding to that the process of giving my story an honest evaluation in light of the fact that I may well be abandoning the past twenty years of work was a whole new level of difficulty. Happily, I think the story survived the test. Mostly.

I realized that there are many aspects of what I am trying to do which could use some improvement. The story as a whole could use some fairly major revisions to "tighten" the mechanics of the overall narrative. I realized that I generated a bunch of ideas and became so enamored with them that I never even considered altering or tinkering with the inner workings of the story for fear of somehow breaking it. In the interim I have been polishing the exterior and adding adornment to the story as an entity while refusing to open the plot to scrutiny and improvement. I now believe there is room for improvement and that improvement needs to happen.

I don't think the story is bad or incapable of standing on its own. Not at all actually. What I do think is that the story could be better. Obviously, there is a danger of turning this into my Mona Lisa, but I don't think I've really gotten to that stage yet. There are portions of the story which are being released and worked on even now. I am not reserving it until perfection is attained. I am just looking down the road to the later sections of the narrative and thinking they could better compliment the thought and effort I've put into building a setting if I took some time to seriously consider their composition and make some adjustments.

Meaning this: I am, for the first time, actively attempting to make major changes to the composition of my story in an effort to improve the flow and self-awareness of the plot, the enjoyability for the reader and the portrayal of significance attached to certain portions of the story.

I hope this doesn't take long.