Cool down before you make drastic edits to your book

Two nights ago, when I was writing, I had a bad realization. I realized that the theme of my book that I had taped to my monitor didn’t fit, oh, the entire middle of the book.

I stressed.

I was about to take out the entire middle of the book.

Instead, I forced myself to walk away from the book for two days to let my brain mull it over.

I stopped and hammertimed and realized that when I looked at the whole, the middle absolutely belonged in what my vision of this book was. Which meant that the answer was simpler than I thought: I was wrong about my theme.

(Asked husband, as he is the only person besides me who knows the entire book back to front. He refused to help me! Said that talking about theme reminded him too much of high school English class.)

So, long story short (too late, I know), I realized that the book does have another, very obvious, theme that carries through everything and I was just oblivious to it because I was focused on the old theme that stopped working drafts ago. (My subconscious is a way better writer than I am, obviously.)

I went from “OMG! I have to scrap everything!!!!!!” to “Just a quick reread, a few small tweaks and we are back on track.”

Where am I going with this?

If I had edited my book two nights ago, when I was convinced everything was terrible and needed to be hacked up, I would have destroyed it. I would have totally changed the book to fit a theme that I was stubbornly clutching to that no longer fit the present draft because I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. By taking two days to think about it and cool down, I realized that the book wasn’t wrong, I was. Now I can tweak the good stuff I already have instead of trying to rewrite the book and shoe horn it all into a theme that wasn’t working.

Two days ago, I wasn’t thinking rationally. I was emotional and frustrated. I fixated on one problem and was ready to tear down the whole house just because I didn’t like the color of the living room couch.

Just like you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) fire off an email when angry and potentially ruin your relationship with that person, editing while blinded by anger at yourself (or even just when you’re in the classic “I suck!” mood we all get in) is just as dangerous.

Sometimes, the best work you can do on your work in progress is to walk away for a a little while and think it out.

Have any of you ever edited in anger and regretted it later?