I have a new motto:
Read endlessly… Write fearlessly… Edit ferociously.
But don’t let that word ferociously scare you. Instead, charge fearlessly ahead as you write your first draft and ignore that tiger of an editor chasing your script. Put him in a cage and don’t let him out until you’ve finished writing whatever part of the story you’re working on.
Many well-proven writers recommend that you don’t do any editing at all until you have written the entire work at least one time through. Others — well, at least a few anyway — do edit what they’ve written during their previous session prior to continuing the first draft. I happen to fall into the second group.
But here is the point, and I know because I’ve done this: If you keep fretting over language details, such as whether to use a questionable comma or to say “grinned” as opposed to “smiled,” you will take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to finish writing out your story, and the passion and the freshness and the drive will be lost. And those are story attributes that are not easily resurrected in revision.
So turn off your spell- and grammar-checkers while you’re writing. Leave the dictionary in the other room or at least not by your side. Forget that Grammar Girl and a thesaurus are waiting for you online. And if you are writing fiction, then forget everything in the real world that you don’t need for your story and immerse yourself in your fictional world.
You may sense that there is a tiger at your back, but it is nothing more than a shadow. It’s just your left brain, a mere shadow of your hard-working and creative right brain, vying for your attention. Don’t listen to left-brain’s chatter. Just keep writing. You can revise your manuscript later, and you or someone else can do final copy editing when the revising stage is finished.
Don’t be afraid of your shadow. It can’t hurt your story unless you let it.
© 2017 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.
Photo: Me and My Shadow © 2017 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.