I am never again going to wait to do a final check of my grammar until a book is finished. It's horrible. Grammar is every bit as much of the artistry as the words and prose, so when you've been removed from the intricacies of the material for several months, like I have, it's tough to get back in and understand why I did certain things. This hasn't been good for my OCD, I'll tell you that. It's been quite miserable actually. For instance, I was working on the manuscript yesterday and a little tired (OCD feasts on "tired," especially fatigue) and had a total OCD meltdown. Some of the OCD symptoms I have are: checking, persistent doubt and guilt. These really like to work in unison and feed off the other. So, as I was going through the manuscript and tidying up the grammar, I wasn't careful and kept letting myself get snagged by little details and things that I shouldn't have messed with. Once I started, I couldn't stop until the sentence was "perfect" and had to re-read it a dozen times to make sure until I could move on. I don't know if any of you have tried reading the same sentence over and over; the words lose all meaning after about the fifth time, so it was really hard to judge if I had it "right" or not, which made me read it more. And then I had to check to see if the grammar was correct, a process that involved more reading of the same sentence. You can see where this is going. I basically was stuck on the same sentence for a couple hours at least before I could try to move on. Pushing the downward arrow key on my keyboard was extremely hard and painful as I worked to convince myself to move on and get my finger to respond.
Eventually, I'd be able to move along at a slow crawl until something else snagged me on the next page and the process would repeat. I don't know if you know this, but when you give into OCD, it escalates and escalates until you feel like you're losing your mind, or on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So, last night, as I was in full on panic-attack mode and my heart was hammering wildly in my chest, I got to a point where I'd read a sentence to make sure the comma was in the proper place, and even though my eyes could see the comma, I'd doubt I was seeing correctly and couldn't believe it was there or that it was in the correct spot. This OCD doubt was so strong that I'd have to sit there staring at my computer screen and talk myself through every step.
"Yes, the comma is there."
"Yes, it is in the right place."
"The grammar is right. The sentence is good. Time to move on now. Just push the 'down arrow' key. Everything will be okay."
It's funny how the OCD brain can take you to a place where you doubt so much and so powerfully, that you can doubt out of existence what your own eyes see or what your hands touch. It's very difficult to accept the reality of some basic things. This is why it's hard for me to turn from a door I just locked because I can't believe that I actually did lock it or that it is indeed locked even after I tested the door a bunch of times and it wouldn't open for me.
That's why I've got to be extremely careful when I revise my work or doing a thorough check like the one I'm doing. Handing off this task to someone else isn't a solution since that is just a cop-out, an easy way out of exposing myself to imperfection and learning to accept it.
So, yeah. That's me, and that was my fun experience last night. Sorry for rambling. My intention for this post isn't as a "woe-is-me" post. I just needed to express myself, get this off my chest and share. That's all. It helps me out and beats keeping the pain cooped-up inside, so I appreciate you for indulging me on this.
