Hi readers! I kind of had an outburst yesterday while making yet another change to the novel and wrote it into my index section. I have since removed it, but I will explain everything in this final note:
As I have said in the past, I am a perfectionist, and have spent way too long editing Star Wars: Illumination: The True War. It has gone through numerous names and edits for quite a while. Even after publishing it, I continued to make edits that didn't just involve grammatical fixes and such. In summary, I have George Lucas Special Edition Syndrome.
I can be a very self-critical person, and this applies to my writing as well. To me, this book, while good, feels like a mess because of how often I have rewritten lines of dialogue and passages and such, even when it is on the website for all of you to see! Wow. Clearly I have way too much time on my hands.
I need to stop constantly tinkering with my book, because then I'll never be able to move on. I am trying to avoid this tendency with my sequel, which is about 50-60% written, because I can have a natural flow/style when I'm not constantly editing everything. At some point, I just have to let go and move on, writing something new. And to do this, I need to be confident in myself and my abilities. Maybe I'm a little too dependant on what others think of me when it comes to my writing, but maybe that can help me gain the confidence to try new things in my life.
The reason I asked for feedback in my acknowledgements section is because I want to hear the audience's viewpoint. As Pixar's 2nd rule of storytelling states, sometimes, writing a story based on what's interesting to me as a reader vs what's fun to me as an author can be surprisingly difficult. I want to create something that I would want to see as an audience member. And maybe your perspectives can help me figure out how to do that.
I found a copy of the original draft of this book, and I was amazed at how much simpler it felt. Then, the book was just the product of the mind of an excited kid who wanted to write a star wars story, and while my final draft is more nuanced and character driven, there are plenty of instances where I miss just how simple the first one was, even though it had some problems. Maybe I'll even publish it at some point.
Perfectionism can help the creative process, but it can also be its greatest enemy as well. I have let it be my enemy far too often, and the only way to really fight it is to just keep writing. I need to write something that excites me, delights my imagination, would catch my eye as an audience member. No more edits or rewrites (save for the occasional grammatical fix). I'm done "fixing" this story. I'm moving on with the next two books in the Illumination trilogy and the various original stories that I intend to begin writing following this. No more perfection, it's time to just write to my heart's delight.
May the Force be with you all, and thank you for reading Star Wars: Illumination: The True War. If you enjoyed it, look out for the sequel:
Star Wars: Illumination
Shadow in the Light