Work in Progress

H&M sweater (similar)
Sezane jeans
Mejuri ring (similar)
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: Osborne Village – Winnipeg, Manitoba

When I posted one of these photos on Instagram, I joked that my expression belonged to someone who just finished the first draft of their third book… and understood just how much work still lay ahead. The statement was tongue in cheek, but there was more than just a bit of truth to it.

I never really thought I’d finish my first book. I put years of work into it, granted, but I took long breaks and often gave up entirely. Mostly, I never thought I would finish it because I couldn’t envision a scenario where all the work I put in culminated in something I felt was good enough to release into the world. In the end, it came down to just having to let it go and acknowledge that the book might never be perfect but it could, in fact, be finished, if I just allowed it to be.

I confess – I made changes to the first book before I republished it, along with my second. Old habits die hard.

My second book still took an enormous amount of work, but it was easier to finish in some ways. I can’t say the same for book three, which I started working on while I was editing book two. That was four years ago. The first draft took four full years. I can only imagine how much longer I might need to it to a point where I feel like I can actually publish it.

…honestly, I’m not optimistic. But I know that it will always feel like a work in progress, in some ways, because I’m a perfectionist and everything I do could always be a little bit better if I just had more time or more energy or more [insert any excuse to delay finishing a project here.] Intellectually, I know I’m not exactly wrong. It could always be better but it will never be perfect, just like my first book never will be, even if I feel compelled to make more changes to it before I re-release it along with the third. So I’m trying to take a moment to just pause and enjoy the fact that I finished something so enormous that demanded so many years of concerted effort. A third book! One book was a big deal. Three books might be overkill, but here we are – I really did it.

Everything in life is a work in progress, when you really think about it. I blame the fact that I struggle to finish writing projects on my latent perfectionism, and that’s certainly part of the problem. But when I really reflect on it, I realise that my distaste for stasis, for the idea that anything can be immovable and unchanging, thus never evolving or improving, is also part of it. There is a certain finality in publishing a book. Once the pages are printed and the spine bound, that’s it. So I take my time getting to that point, because there is no going back. Except with my pen, writing in the margins, as I’ve done more than once in copies of my books.

…like I said, old habits.

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