Hello, My Name Is Gwynn And I'm OCD

"Hey, wait! Me, OCD? What idiot wrote that title? That Obsessive Compulsive Disorder-thingy that has people washing their hands fifty times a minute is not me. You've got the wrong person."

"Really? Are you sure about that?"

"Of course! I mean, I would know, wouldn't I?"

"Maybe not."

"Listen, there's absolutely nothing obsessive about me except perhaps for . . . "

"Ah! Light bulb moment. Care to elaborate?"

"Not really."

"Growing old here."

"Okay, okay. I admit, one of my slightly more annoying habits could build a case for OCD."

"Build a case! Are you kidding? We could write textbooks."

All right, I get the message. I admit that I'm one of the most OCD people in the world with an affliction that goes under the all-encompassing label of 'excessive editing'.

Anyone one else suffer from that? Non writers out there will shake their heads, wondering what on earth I'm talking about. Writers, on the other hand, will nod their heads sagely, and some might even add, "Ah, poor girl. Spare a thought for her and her writing projects because they both died in the frantic search to eliminate that final adverb and to add that final coma."

Arghhhhhhhh. I could shriek until my throat bleeds.

At the moment I have five books sitting on my computer in various stages of 'editing' (my editing, not even my editor's editing, sob), but do you think I can contain the urge to tweak, and to retweak, and to retweak yet again to get the damn things finished? No. It's totally and utterly and irrevocably beyond my OCD capabilities.

So, time to call in help.

And for this I have to thank one of my favourite authors and bloggers, Lindsay Buroker. Lindsay is nothing if not proficient having written and published ten novels and a bunch of novellas in three years, so she seems like the person I should be listening to. In a blog post this week she recommended a book for suffers like me.

Goodreads

Convinced, as I always am by her prose, I rushed all out of breath across to Amazon and downloaded it onto my Kindle. I will be exploring its pages this week, and hopefully, prayerfully, pleadingly, I will soon be pumping out 10k of good words in day. Personally, I think that's a bit optimistic for someone as OCD as me, but then that might just be the black monster of negativity talking. Down boy!

The black monster of negativity? Ah yes, him. But that's a subject of another post. In the meantime, wish me luck as my OCD and I face each other for a showdown. High Noon all over again.

cheers
Gwynn