If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix it

We all spend a lot of our time fixing things, or making them right. This week I have been doing just that—except in the end it didn't need to be fixed.

I put a sign-up form to my newsletter on my website, promising those who subscribed that they would get free chapters of my new fantasy romance. These particular emails are automated since there is no way I can keep track of who needs chapter 1, or chapter 7, or chapter 4 and so on.

The first chapter of Queen Andraya is a third draft and completely different than the original. I made these changes based on some feedback from my online writing group. I made additional changes based on some feedback from my husband. He said he wanted to know what was at stake for the queen from the beginning. So I wrote the new first chapter and loved it, thinking that my writing group would too. Well, I was sorely disappointed. They all had more problems with it than they did originally. BUT, this revised first chapter had already gone out to my recent subscribers. So I changed the first chapter again for those who were to see it afterwards. I believe this is okay because everyone knows that writing a book is a process and there are bound to be changes, even drastic ones.

There was one slight complication though. One of the recent subscribers had already read the new first chapter. This was fine, except that now she wouldn't get the section that I had moved. I thought this information was important for her to know so that it could set up the next scene she would read. Moreover, the other subscribers that read the section that was now taken out of chapter 1 would get a duplicate (since I moved much of the first scene to the third chapter).

So I had a couple of options: I could send an email to one subscriber with scene 2 1/2, so she could get the whole story so far. Or, I could change it the way I wanted it, but then I would have to send an email to the remaining subscribers explaining that scene three had parts in it that duplicated scene 1.

I stewed over it a bit and decided the former option. But then I ran into another problem. I could only send the email from my desktop because I didn't have the file on my phone (which is where I often send emails from) but the problem was I couldn't remember my password! I tried answering the security questions that were set up, but to no avail. And apparently, I didn't write it down anywhere. I knew I could spend hours on the phone with security or tech support, but I certainly did not want to do that.

What did I decide to do? Nothing! I left it the way it was. Sure, the one subscriber wouldn't be able to read two important pages, and the other ones wouldn't see the new beginning, but it was the only thing to do. It is what it is, as they say. Everyone will be able to buy the complete and polished book at a later date, anyway.

So I had spent all this time and energy trying to fix a problem when in the end the best thing to do was to leave it. Waste of time? I don't think so. It was good to realize that things can't always be perfect or the way I want them to be.

Kind of like life.