Monday, April 22, 2013

Revisions Are Like a Fresh Coat of Paint

We bought a house recently and I'm working on some improvements. Purple may be a pretty color but the rest of the exterior paint is gray. I figured the side gate would look nice in pale gray, especially since I had some on hand. What do you think? Nice, huh? Looked like an easy enough project to tackle. Ha! Everything takes longer than we think.
  
First I noticed the lower left board wasn't nailed on. Second, the whole thing needed a wipe down--dusty. Then there's the regular prep work of taping edges and so forth. One coat wouldn't cut it when going from dark to light paint. It was a job alright, but I like the results.

Writing is like that. It takes longer than we think, we find things that need fixing or polishing, there's prep work like research, and one draft won't cut it. But any story worth telling is worth telling well and the effort put into it makes us like the results much better. Spruce up that manuscript with all that it needs to become fresh and clean! The results are worth it.
Have a great week!

7 comments:

Melissa Cunningham said...

I like the gray a lot. Nice job!

Unknown said...

Thanks, Melissa!

Canda said...

Revisions do take a looooong time! I'm in the middle of one and am trying to keep motivated to continue. Everything I change makes me want to keep going, but it's the size of the whole thing that makes it hard. In my head I keep hearing, "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming!"

Cathy said...

Great analogy. Projects take on a life of their own, kind of like stories.

Renae Weight Mackley said...

Yep, we gotta do as Dorie suggests and keep at it.

Peggy Eddleman said...

Such a great analogy! And the fence door looks fabulous. :)

Renae Weight Mackley said...

Thank you, Peggy!