The editing process can be hell. It can also be enjoyable. It can also lead one to a nervous breakdancing of the mind. I’m currently working on the edit of my novel and finding it incredibly arduous. It’s the fourth time I’ve been through it in the last year. At least this time it feels as if it’s nearing completion, for better or worse. There is always the ever present fear that I’m holding a tombstone in my hand. Writing my own eulogy as it were.

When I write, I write to see the page getting filled up. To watch my words come to life in such a way that at the end of it, I’m in slight awe of what I’ve put down. When I edit it’s more like wading through data and sorting it out, which can be satisfying, but can also drain me. The ever present urge to open Reddit is real. Just for a minute. Just to take a short break. Just to get a new perspective. And time slips away. The edges of the work start to bleed into play, and pretty soon there’s no time left.

But all work and no play makes Clay a dull boy. So where is that line? Should there even be a line or should I work until I’m unable to work anymore? As Hemingway said, There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

And there are days that blood flows easily and the satiety at the end is totally worth it. Then there are the days the lines begin to blur. I hike to the top of a mountain and then go home and write in flurried trance. Then I look at the page and can hardly believe it came from my own hand. Those are good days.

The struggle to find that line is real, which begs the question if that line even exists. Or is it something that comes and goes? Is it something that can never be truly defined?

I suspect that it’s something that can never be truly captured and anyone who writes will always be chasing. We just keep writing until we die and do the best we can. We keep bleeding until there’s nothing left to give and watch what we’ve done either fade away or take off. Wish me luck as I plow through this shit one more time. Hopefully leading to something more and not sending it to the graveyard that so many pieces are buried in. Hopefully I can let go of the tombstone before I sink with it.