Even when it feels like nothing is happening, progress is always progress. Last week before the Turkey day came, I ground on a line edit. It was really slow and at the end of the day, I had nothing new to look at. It left me feeling let down. Nothing shiny and new to show for hours and hours of scrutiny, corrections, and debating word choice appeared, at least it seems that way. In fact, I have a much more polished manuscript to query.
So while the tedium of making sure the commas are in the right place, which is my own special challenge, felt like a glacier doing landscaping, it was necessary. Their, they’re, there, and other common mistakes disappeared, verb tense shifted to the same timeline, grammar corrected, word repetition decreased, punctuation checked, and sentences simplified. Not the most fun way to spend hours.
Progress occurred without it feeling like it. It was a massive step forward even though no new story emerged. Learning the work is the work and not ignoring it is the biggest indicator of the progress for myself.