Is Having a Book to Promote Just an Excuse to do Something Fun?

I've mostly decided to republish my third novel, but under a different title, and as for its cover, that's still up for debate. Miblart has a Black Friday sale going on right now (20% off), but I don't even have a title, much less a blurb for the back cover, so it seems I'll miss out on that deal. 

All I've accomplished so far is setting up the KDP template with the proper margins and copying about the first five chapters over to the template. I know full well that there are things in the manuscript that need changing, so why am I bothering to copy it over now? This is called procrastinating.

Editing is by far my least favorite part of writing. Yours, too? My problem with editing is that while I can easily spot the problems, I have no idea how to fix them. At least I've learned not to make changes to the source document, thank God. I've done that in the past, screwed up royally, and all the "undo's" in the world wouldn't return the manuscript to its original state. (I think Word just gets tired and gives up.) When I was editing Running From Herself, I identified three areas that nagged at me, so I set out to fix them. The opening scene, for one. I managed to accomplish that revision semi-satisfactorily. (An author is never fully satisfied.) The other two areas? I re-read them, brainstormed how to improve them, and in the end, never changed a word. (Well, maybe a word, but that's about it.) I concluded that my talents have a limit, and that I did the best I could. I've also learned from experience that second or third attempts generally turn out worse than the first. 

With this unnamed novel, I noticed upon re-reading it that my writing style changed at around the 25% mark. I have no idea why. I could chalk it up to "still looking for my voice", but the first two novels were actually written in more my normal style than the beginning of this one was. It might be that after having two novels rejected by agents, I was trying to be more "writerly". (Don't do that.) Bottom line, I don't like it and it reads as fake. So, that first 25% somehow needs to be changed. So, again, why am I preparing the paperback template now? 

It struck me yesterday that having a "new" novel is an excuse to do peripheral, more fun things. I'm already envisioning creating a separate page on my website for the book. I'd get to mess around with mood boards and video clips; I might even create a Spotify playlist, like I did with Running From Herself. It's sort of pathetic in a way. The famous saying, "I hate writing, but I love having written", isn't completely true. I like writing, but now that I'm not doing it anymore, I look forward to doing creative things, with the novel serving as sort of an accessory.

In that vein, I also consulted AI for some title suggestions. Conversing with AI is like talking to a dumb, overly enthusiastic friend. It loves everything! I could tell it I have a terminal illness and it would shout, "You go, girl!" According to AI, everything I do, even asking a question, is awesome. I quickly learned to skip past its affirmations. Why do its programmers do that? I detest ass-kissers. Anyway, I fed my title question into it, only specifying that my novel involves family secrets. ("Wow! That's great!") On the plus side, it did ask me if I wanted something commercial or more "lyrical". I opted for both. Not to be harsh, but AI still hasn't mastered syntax. It is able to find appropriate words; it just doesn't know how to arrange them. Or it thinks a certain combination of words sounds evocative, but a client soon realizes that the combination says exactly nothing. See, that's my beef with AI--well, one of them--try as it may, it can't come across as an actual human. It can approximate emotion, but its approximation leaves one empty.

Take a couple of its suggestions:

The Weight of Quiet Things

Echoes We Couldn’t Bury

My reaction is...what? I know what it's trying to get at, but the flourishes drive me nuts. Why not just "Quiet Things"? And trying to bury echoes is like when I was five and my big brother told me I could dig my way to China. It's a hopeless endeavor. "Get in there, you echoes! Get in the hole! Stop with your backtalk!"

The only reason I ever contact AI is to extract suggestions--a starting point. "Quiet" I kind of like, but not in AI's formulation. It also gave me something about "ruins", which is intriguing. But I'm not even at the point where I need to make a title decision. Again, procrastination.

I'm in no rush to get on with this project. Revising sounds like a nightmare. What am I going to do about the "writerly" parts? Just delete all the needless adjectives? (I guess, yes. Although a few adjectives might be nice; perhaps just better ones.)

The bummer for me is, without taking care of all the crap I don't want to do, I can't move on to the fun. Sure, as a fellow author, you're asking, isn't the book the point? Mmm, yes and no. You know my sales record. My goal isn't to sell. It's been a while, but as I recall, the goal was to have a physical copy of my book for me. Still, I'll concede that the book should be good, on the off-chance I ever want to pick it up and read it.

For now, I'm choosing inertia. I've gotta think about my holiday meal preparation anyway, so that's a handy excuse.

And there's hardly any rush. It's not like I've got any new writing in the pipeline, so time is my friend. And AI agrees with me. It eagerly told me so.