The pain of revision

I am currently going through the first revisions of my book Avarice's Hoard and am finding it much more difficult than the initial writing of the story. There are scenes and quotes that I absolutely love that just don't support the overall story as well as is needed. So, I am experiencing some pain as I go through and change scenes and cut characters. Inevitably, I am much happier with the end result but that doesn't change the pain of losing the things I labored to create and loved in the initial writing.

When I was initially writing the story, there was tremendous excitement as I discovered the depth of each character and found how that intimate knowledge of their thoughts and lives allowed for different twists in the story. I could hardly wait to start writing each day. I loved doing research on the details of the various locations and the history that could be tied into the central theme. At the end of the day I was disappointed that I had to stop writing to meet other obligations.

Now that I am in the process of revising the story I find a tremendous need for self discipline. It seems any minor distraction can draw me away from the revisions. I have stopped dressing casually and gone back to business casual attire so that I feel a greater obligation to do the work of tearing apart a creation I love to make it better, deeper and ultimately more compelling for the reader.

I suppose there are lessons for life that can be taken from this experience. Life is journey not a destination. We can never become so comfortable that we are not willing to make improvements. In the same way that exercise is exhausting and often painful, the results are worth the efforts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity."

So it is with revising a book or revising our lives, we must truly evaluate the value of where we are so we can wade through the pain of reinvention to end up in a better place.