“Hey you”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. That line – back four pages. Go rewrite it- it’s WRONG.”
“But it’s the first draft…”
“That doesn’t matter – GO. DO. IT. NOW. Or you’ll FAIL!”
~~
Perhaps not verbatim, but similar to what I hear (or used to hear) in my head on a very regular basis. As I write. When I pause. When I send something out for someone to read. Even when I’m watching television.
All. The. Time.
While you’re writing a first draft, the pesky self-doubting inner-editor often steps in with whispers of how to fix something straight away. To stop your flow, go back and make corrections it’s suddenly thought of.
I know I used to get caught up on this. The time I spent going back and fiddling with a line until I was happy with it, only to wake up in the middle of the night and realize I needed to fix it some more. It took me a long time to realize – but I was too close to my work for my interim edits to do anything constructive to my work. Most of the time? I just made it worse.
Now, I’ll caveat this with my habitual: This is how things work for me, they may not work the same way for you.
Taming the Pesky Inner-Editor
Write the draft without editing.
Easier said than done, right?
How could I say such a thing? Easily.
I, like many other writers I know, had issues finishing a project. My tendency to go back and rewrite before I finished the piece, made actually completing one a very rare occurrence.
Now, you’ve made the decision to BE a writer. You’ve given yourself a list and (hopefully) figured out your groove.
Sit down, look at your W.I.P. and glare at it. Yes, that’s right – glare. The moment it tries to make you go back and edit; the moment it whispers in your ear that what you’ve written is crap, mediocre or never going to be good enough – That’s the moment you need to, quite literally, tell it to: F*** Off. (If you don’t like swearing, then tell it to piss off, but I find being forceful works better).
Why?
While everyone is different, you can’t beat the fact that an empty page is empty. By this I mean, if you want to be able to go back and polish, edit and send it out to beta readers – you need a complete story with which to do it.
Focus on getting that first draft down. Don’t let the inner editor pull you back and bog you down. Interrupting the original flow you have can stagnate your writing until it trickles to a stop.
You can always fix a bad sentence, but you can’t do anything to an unwritten one.
Naturally it helps to have your plot nailed down. But holes can be filled, and character inconsistencies corrected. Words can be replaced and paragraphs rephrased.
For me, getting the words down is of paramount importance. The rest I can fix after the fact.
Pesky Inner-Editor is another of the things you have to do yourself. You can get cheered on somewhere like #writemotivation, or by your crit partners, even by your family. But the person who has to tell that annoying voice to shut up – is you.
I often reward mine with the promise of letting it empty a few red pens and highlighters when I go over my first draft in paper-edit form.
Whatever you have to do to get the words down? It’s worth it.
How do you deal with the Inner-Editor? Do you have one? Does it get in the way of completing drafts or have you figured out another way to deal with it?
Man, this is just the post I needed to read today. I’m having a random crisis of confidence and BURN IT DOWN this morning.
I hope it helped a bit. Pesky inner editor can really hamper your writing. Tell it and the inner critic to go away and leave you alone.
OMG this is my biggest problem.. I can’t stop editing, and so, writing becomes soooo painfully slow. I really need to work on this, or I’ll never finish this novel. ugh!
Finish the book so I can read the damn thing! URG! 😀 Please?
Amen sister! I struggled with this for years. Then, I did NaNoWriMo this year and forced myself to just keep writing and NOT look back. Once I realized I could write an entire first draft in 30 days I almost kicked myself hard in the @$$. Not going back was super hard, but now I have the tools to practice that for every first draft!
Yeah this was always my undoing. I’d be going back and back and back again lol.
Once you’ve got that first draft you can tear it apart with your inner editor. I’m glad you discovered it in NaNo 😀
Oh my. My inner editor has been relaxing but my inner critic, the one that nags that no matter what I do my writing will never be good enough, it gave me an earful recently and boy did I have to take a breather. I wrote about my little insecurity today at my blog. Me and the editor are doing a little better since she and I battled furiously during NaNoWriMo, but that inner critic is a terrible b**ch.
I also relegate the critic to the backburner – or try to. That one is really hard to shut up. When it tries to stop me from writing a first draft, I tell it to piss off because I’m writing it for me.
Doesn’t always work indefinitely, but usually shuts the bitch up for a bit 😉
I like the line “You can always fix a bad sentence, but you can’t do anything to an unwritten one.” So true!!
Thank you 😀 And it is true – but it takes a while to realize it 😉
You are so right! Most of the time with me, though, it’s not a sentence. It’s giant plot things I just want to go back and fix. The problem is, I have abandoned whole drafts and started over and not gotten anywhere with it because I needed to fix something else. So I also have to sit down and get it all written, telling myself it will be better in the long-run.
But I really like that part about glaring at your manuscript. I’m so going to try that.
I should add: I’m a plotter now. So I have a definitive plot outline with the majority of plot hole possibilities at least mostly ironed out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m currently fixing a couple of slight bumps I ran into – but fixing is much easier than not having anything TO fix 😉
Also – glaring is fun and rejuvenating. It’s very rare that my manuscript actually answers back 😉
I don’t really have one… not while I’m writing anyway. Maybe it just has an ‘off’ switch. I find it quite easy to write, then go back and revise. Maybe I’m just lucky.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
LOL you know exactly what I am constantly battling with! I still haven’t learned to turn it completely off. And occasionally I stumble. But I am getting better thanks to your thwaps! 😀
You are awesome! I love how much I can relate to this lol. You spur me on 😉
“You can always fix a bad sentence, but you can’t do anything to an unwritten one.” Yeppers, needed to read that. I hit a stuck block on my novel WIP. It is my first long fiction attempt and I made myself plot/outline. I’m a crazy pantser so I figure I didn’t do it “right” since I feel like I have to go retool/figure out some stuff now before I go on to not get too lost. But–big but–I don’t want to stop the forward writing momentum. Oh I see you tricky evil inner-editor.
I think it’s one of the biggest problems people have. They try to fix it before they have a big picture to compare everything to.
tricky inner-editor IS Evil. I envy your ability to pants!