Aargh!!! I recently submitted the opening chapters of the novel I'm editing to a number of competitions. Cheshire, Bath, First Novel etc as well as for a mentorship opportunity and in an application for Arts Council funding. I'd gotten some really positive feedback on the chapters, including from a fantastic, award winning writer, but something about them wasn't quite sitting right with me. I had the vaguest of ideas about what was wrong but no matter how I tried I couldn't figure it out enough to get them to be how I wanted.
A lot of people who've read my work, including that writer, have told me I'm way too hard on my writing and that I'm just too close to the work to see how good it is. But I kept on going back to those chapters and trying to tweak them. To the point that it was holding me back from moving forward with the novel. So yesterday I decided to submit to everything outstanding that I wanted to submit to, get them out of the way so I could forget about them and move on. (At least until I was ready for my next draft.)
So I did my last tweak and submitted. Then I even spent a couple of hours on a different short writing project and submitted that. And got on with editing the next chapter of my novel. I was finally able to get back into and wrote away, pulling some small sections out that would be more suitable in a later chapter and polishing up the rest. I was pretty worn out but also quite satisfied by the time I had to stop.
Last night at 4am, I woke up to pee. Then got back into bed and every single thing I feel is wrong in my opening chapters hit me with great clarity. For the next 3 hours I lay there, as idea after idea about how to fix them hit me. And not the half asleep ideas you think you have sometimes before you get up and realise it was all nonsense. They are solid ideas for each chapter and I'm pretty excited and pretty pissed off.
I've decided to just make notes and plough on forward rather than going back. Which is what I should be doing now instead of posting this. But aaarrrggghhh! It's so damn frustrating to feel like I've wasted all my competition entries.
(On the other hand, at least now I've created an insurance policy for my ego if I don't l longlist.)