"2020 was a disaster!" said almost everyone on the planet. Except, there were little rays of light in most people's lives too. Mine was having two books published. What did not pan out well was trying to edit 2021's two books as well as write, revise, and edit another novel to submit. During a pandemic. Might as well throw in some homeschooling to an autistic and attention deficit child, while your yourself have attention issues too. I often take on too much, so with all this, I attempted to delegate-- with disastrous results.
Now, when I say "disastrous" I am not blaming anyone who helped me because, in the long run, my book was better for it. I'm blaming myself for a lifetime of "doing it all" by choice, making me inflexible in my writing methodology. I am a pantser, cultivated to be one after I learned everything about structures, literary conventions, grammar, etc. In short, only after I felt I mastered it, did I ignore structure and literary conventions. They come out naturally, like magic.
This particular problem was taking a handwritten book by young, not-quite-professional-yet, 20-something Lisa, and revising as I typed--in some places, completely rewriting. This is annoyingly unpanster-like so it is distasteful and limiting, but the bones of my story were good (and this was the last hand-written one!) So I delegated and let someone type it up for me. It was amazing that they could read my awful handwriting, and I was ahead of the game. Or so I thought. It turns out that my brain revises better as I read it and type it up. I had to make multiple passes through and rewrote everything from sometimes just my poor wording or rewriting entire chapters.
My next issue was giving it to my critique group. They're fantastic. They were supposed to do 50 pages but some went through it all. Impatient and having a looming deadline, I could not wait for feedback. I edited. And then I got several copies back with editing notes. Sifting through all of those and weighing feedback from plot to grammar took me ages. I couldn't simply accept the changes in their files. (I know there are ways to do this but most of my group are old school when it comes to computers). I had to use the feedback and a lot was useful; it just took me longer than before.
In short, delegating was an epic fail because of my own rigidity and inability to wait. I missed a deadline (but it was okay with my publisher), and it took twice as long as I normally do to write. I normally can complete an entire novel start through edits within 6 months--less time when I'm off for the summer. In 2020, it took just over a year to finish a novel--with a rough handwritten draft already completed prior. The homeschooling and teaching during the pandemic surely were to blame as well, but I learned to be more patient, less rushed, and to loosen up my rigidity.
Would it have been better if I never delegated though? Probably not, but I don't want to test the theory with more pandemic-like times. Although things are not quite back to normal, I was able to write 1/3 of a novel, a short story, and a few chapters of other WIPs from Jan-April, and a bunch of blogs. I feel back on track. Now that I'm finished with work for the semester, I'm ready to pound out some beautiful fiction. In fact, I already am.