Having doubts about my editing skills

Here it is February 5th and so far I’ve only managed to get 50 pages edited out of 200! I’m feeling so overwhelmed, and since I am brand new to this, like a fish out of water.

I was told to put my first draft away for at least a month so I could come back to it with fresh eyes. I think for me that was too long. I just can’t seem to get my mojo back. I’m thinking a couple weeks would have suited me better.

I’m still on my first round of self edits and one thing is for sure. I need to make an outline and stick to it if and when I write another novel. I thought I could be a pantser (fly by the seat of my pants) writer and let the story evolve as it came to me. Obviously this was not one of my greatest ideas.

When I first started writing this novel, I didn’t even have a clear picture of the ending. I just sort of let my characters take me where they wanted to go. It worked, to an extent. I was able to flesh out 50,000 words in one month and I now have a beginning, middle and end. It’s all the stuff in between that’s throwing me for a loop. I keep moving things around and now I’m not even sure if it flows like it should. I’m in editing HELL!

More than once, I’ve wanted to throw the whole thing in the trash and start over. Someone out there please tell me this is normal!

Thanks to a fellow blogger, I will be using a different outlining approach if I ever get done with novel #1 and move on to novel #2. Outline Your Novel by K.M. Weiland has a workbook and even software to walk through the outlining process and I plan on making this my next writing related purchase. Thank you Kirsten Mah of the Kirsten Mah Writes blog for sharing this valuable information!

For now, I guess I just keep swimming.

Please send me some words of wisdom or just plain encouragement! I need all the help I can get!