The A & E Pride and Prejudice is one of those things that my family watched so much when the kids were growing up that we could use it as a short-hand code for talking to each other.

And one of the sentences we used for “you can do this, no one will know” is “Lady Catherine will never know.”

This is from the scene (not in the book) where poor Maria Lucas is unpacking and repacking all her gowns because Lady Catherine was so forceful on the one single way to pack gowns. And Lizzy answers with “They’re your gowns, you pack them in any way you want. Lady Catherine will never know.”

In our family this applies to things like givers who attach a certain use to a gift. Like “I’m giving you $500 but it’s for winter clothes” and the kid goes “I have winter clothes, I need blah blah upgrade to my computer.” Or a study-series for something. Or when you do something by a means not recommended, but that yet does the thing right in the end.

It has a neverend of use in writing and all art.

So, I’ve recently hit a very stupid patch in my writing. It started with No Man’s Land, but it’s now hitting everything. And it’s so annoying, because I hate rewrites and edits. Particularly self-imposed ones. But they are now attacking me this way, and there’s nothing I can do.

Look, when I started doing art again, after I hit my head at 40, my drawing had stopped at where it was when I was 14. So it was “gifted 14 year old.” And then I realized that wasn’t true. It’s just that at 14 I lacked the patience to keep improving and deepening the work. It took longer, but the results were much better.

OTOH this didn’t happen to me in writing till I’d written No Man’s Land, and proofed it, and all that the first time, and then in the middle of the night woke up thinking it was UNSATISFACTORY. Which led to being awake at three am going over all the entire novel again, adding texture and feel and making sure my sentences weren’t upside down and sideways.

And now I’m in the middle of the same thing with Witch’s Daughter, because I can’t let it out of my desk until it’s way better.

This is of course very annoying, but the good side of this is two fold:

Once it’s out, no one will be able to tell I had to rewrite it and improve it.

AND

At some point my brain will integrate this process, and I’ll write the first time as clean as after rewrite. (No, seriously. Every time I have to work on something like this that’s the process.)

Right now, I just have to keep pushing and remember Lady Catherine will never know.