Editing & the Lochness Monster of Doubt
While swimming in a sea of self-doubt and discarded adverbs.
There’s a high that comes with finishing a draft, an electric, all-consuming rush, like you’ve just survived a war of your own making. You crawl out of the wreckage, smoke still curling off your keyboard, triumphant and slightly feral, thinking: I did it. I actually did it.
Then comes the editing.
You open the draft, and the ground shifts. The adrenaline dies. You’re no longer the victorious war general—you’re the poor bastard stuck with cleanup duty. That line you loved? Cringe. That plot twist? Contrived. Your main character? Whinier than a toddler on a sugar crash. The whole thing reads like someone gave a raccoon a thesaurus and access to your trauma. Spoiler: it was you.
And this is when she rises.
Imposter syndrome.
She coils in the gut. She tightens in the chest. She drags her claws down the inside of your confidence like she owns the place. She says the story’s a fluke. That you're a fluke. That every decent sentence was an accident, and now the world’s about to catch on.
This is editing.
It’s not a gentle process. It’s a scalpel to the ego. A spotlight on every lazy choice, every bloated scene, every subplot you forgot existed. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done this. It still burns. It still whispers that maybe you peaked in Chapter 3.
But then, the page shifts again.
A line lands like a punch. A scene breathes. A character sharpens into something real, raw, electric. And suddenly, the fog lifts. Not because the monster slinks away—she never leaves—but because you stop caring that she’s watching.
You write anyway.
You slice, you reshape, you rebuild. Not because it’s easy but because it matters. Because somewhere in the rubble is the story you meant to tell.
So Nessie can rise. She can hiss, and glare, and bare her insecurities like teeth.
I’ll still dive in.
This story deserves the fight.
And so do I.
(Also—Chapter 8 is pure sin. Still glorious. Nessie can choke on it.)
Nicky xox
Got a question about editing? A favourite trick for silencing your own inner cryptid? Drop it in the comments—I want to hear your unhinged tips, brutal truths, and questionable coping mechanisms. Misery loves company, and so do writers mid-rewrite. 😏