Taking Inventory

What Editing a Book Reminded Me About Editing a Life

By the time Finding Your Sourdough reaches the end of the editing process, my publisher and I will have gone through the manuscript more than seven times.

Seven complete passes.

More than three hundred pages.

Again.

And again.

And again.

At first, editing meant looking for the obvious things.

Grammar.

Punctuation.

Chronology.

A sentence that didn't quite work.

Then we went deeper.

Words I used too often.

Phrases that had quietly become habits.

Thoughts I had explained more than once.

Sentences that no longer needed the words surrounding them.

What should stay?

What should go?

What is essential?

What has already done its work?

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I realized I had done this before.

Not with a manuscript.

With my life.

The Rooms

More than six years ago, I found myself sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Broken.

Exhausted.

Unrecognizable.

I didn't know the language yet.

I didn't know how to tell my story.

So in those early days, I mostly listened.

I sat quietly toward the back of the room and took it all in.

People spoke a language I was only beginning to understand.

They talked about surrender.

Acceptance.

Inventory.

Amends.

One day at a time.

They talked about showing up.

And slowly, I began learning.

I remember those first months working with my sponsor.

We went through the Big Book.

I learned about taking inventory.

Not an inventory of everyone else's behavior.

Mine.

That distinction mattered.

I began learning how to look honestly at my life.

What belonged to me?

What needed acknowledgment?

Where had I caused harm?

What patterns kept repeating?

What was I carrying that I needed to release?

What needed repair?

And what could no longer come with me if I wanted to live differently?

It wasn't comfortable work.

But it was honest work.

And honesty, I would learn, has a way of clearing space.

Seven Passes

All these years later, I am sitting with another kind of inventory.

My manuscript.

My publisher and I have gone through it over and over.

And this final pass has been particularly interesting.

I began noticing my habits.

Perhaps.

Maybe.

Looking back now.

There is something...

And apparently, everyone in my book smiles.

A lot.

But underneath the humor was something familiar.

Patterns.

Things I couldn't see until I was willing to look closely enough.

So I began taking inventory.

Does this sentence belong?

Does it serve the story?

Am I saying this because it needs to be said, or because I have become accustomed to saying it?

Am I explaining something the reader already understands?

Is this the truth?

And most importantly...

Am I willing to let something go simply because it no longer needs to be there?

That question felt familiar too.

What Stays

Editing has taught me that removing something doesn't mean it was wrong.

Some sentences belonged to an earlier version of the story.

Some thoughts needed more explanation when I first wrote them than they do now.

Some words helped me find my way to what I was really trying to say.

They weren't mistakes.

They were part of the process.

They simply didn't need to come with me into the finished book.

I think healing can work that way too.

There are things we carry because we needed them once.

Ways of protecting ourselves.

Ways of thinking.

Stories we told ourselves because they helped us survive a particular season.

Questions we asked repeatedly because we weren't ready for the answers.

They weren't necessarily wrong.

They simply may not belong in the next chapter.

Taking inventory asks us to notice the difference.

And Then, Of Course, There Is Sourdough

Somehow, I always end up back here.

Flour.

Water.

Starter.

Salt.

Sourdough has taught me that more isn't always better.

More water doesn't automatically make better bread.

More fermentation doesn't make better dough.

More handling doesn't improve a loaf simply because I keep touching it.

There comes a point when I have done what I can do.

Mix.

Fold.

Watch.

Learn.

Shape.

And then...

leave it alone.

That last part has taken me a while to learn.

There is a temptation, particularly when we care deeply about something, to keep working it.

One more adjustment.

One more fold.

One more edit.

One more pass.

Surely I can make it just a little better.

But eventually, continued handling stops improving the thing we love.

At some point, we have to trust the work.

The Inventory of a Life

I think that is what these final weeks with my manuscript have been reminding me.

Recovery taught me how to take inventory of my life.

Writing taught me how to take inventory of my story.

Sourdough taught me how to recognize when I have done enough.

All three require honesty.

All three require humility.

And all three eventually require surrender.

There are things worth keeping.

There are things worth changing.

There are things worth making right.

And there are things that have already taught us what they came to teach us.

Those can be released.

Not because they didn't matter.

Because they did.

They helped bring us here.

The Final Pass

Soon, I will send the manuscript back to my publisher.

And at some point, someone will tell me:

That's it.

No more edits.

No more rewriting.

No more moving sentences around.

No more wondering whether I used perhaps three times too many.

The book will have to leave my hands.

I think there is a lesson in that too.

We can spend our entire lives editing ourselves.

Revisiting.

Reconsidering.

Replaying.

Trying to perfect what has already happened.

But healing isn't perfection.

Neither is recovery.

Neither is writing.

Neither is bread.

They are practices of attention.

Of honesty.

Of learning.

Of showing up.

Every. Single. Day.

And then knowing when it is time to stop working yesterday's dough.

Take the inventory.

Make the correction.

Keep what is true.

Release what has finished its work.

And move forward.

I think that is what editing has been teaching me all along.

Not how to create a perfect book.

How to recognize when the story I have lived, examined, rewritten, and finally learned to accept...

is ready to be released.

Warmly,

Kathy
Art of The Crumb