Grammar, Editing, and Other General Writing Woes

"Who are you writing to?"

"Whom. You foreigners are wrecking the English language."

"I'm not speaking English. I'm speaking Common. There's no 'whom' in Common."

-My excuse for never using the word whom (correctly, at least). Thank you, OSC.

It's funny- if you ask most people, they'll probably tell you I'm pretty good with grammar. I get freaked out over the tiniest mistakes, I always write emails and even texts with proper capitalization, spelling, and grammar, and I generally try not to abuse the English language (those same people would have a hard time talking about my grammar in other languages without falling over laughing). But when I'm writing, everything I know about grammar goes out the window.

I made a stupid plot decision a few months ago- I wanted to show one of my characters as not being seen as human, so I decided to use "it" as main pronoun for him. Now, not only did this mean I had to use different pronouns in different POVs (as well as slowly change everyone else over to different ones), but it got me into a whole new range of grammar issues. I make the its/it's mistake at least ten times daily, and I'm sure there are a lot more that I haven't caught. Editing is going to be a nightmare.

It's not that I'm bad at using correct grammar, because the truth is, I'm not. I'm on pretty solid ground when writing papers or emails or anything that doesn't involve trying to write a novel. Sentence structure trips me up when I'm writing, dialogue rules are a complete mess, and in between it all I'm trying to construct something that I hope other people will someday want to read, meaning my sentences have to sound good well as make sense.

Right now, while I'm still desperately struggling to create something that might be almost, but not entirely unlike a first draft (sorry, couldn't resist- that reminds me, I need to bring that book in for someone tomorrow) the grammar mistakes don't worry me so much. What does worry me is the monumentous task ahead if I finish- editing the thing. My plot makes no sense. Characters pop in and out of existence as I see fit. I had a mental breakdown earlier today because Adam simply would not leave the building and the scene was stalling and he wouldn't listen to me (think I'm crazy? Read Stephanie Meyer's blog. I've got nothing on here about this) whatever I did. But all that... well, it's fixable. I can always find workarounds for plot, and I knew this was going to happen when I started writing the thing.

But what's got me worried is the grammar and the writing. I know that I can fix the plot, I can fix the characters, and I can probably even make it as long or as short as necessary. But what I can't do is make myself into a more talented writer. I can't fix my inability to write grammatically correct dialogue, or my terrible descriptions. Someday, I want to put my (metaphorical, who has the time or the physical ability to do that?) pen down and say "I'm written a novel". I want to be finished. Not now, but I do want that to happen. And I'm honestly not sure I'm good enough to make that happen.

-HH

Postscript: I never edit my blog posts, so you can see what I'm talking about with the clumsy writing...
Postpostscript: Gas? I misspelled good so badly that autocorrect couldn't save me and it turned into gas? Well, then. I am an amazing typist.