on refusing to edit
One of the biproducts of taking Writer^tm as a core personality trait in middle school, is that you are used to being exceptional. Your 7th grade creative writing teacher said you used descriptions well, and now you are convinced that you are nothing if not an aficionado of prose—and if you’re not an aficionado of prose, you are indeed nothing. Fast forward a couple of decades, and you’re glaring at a word doc that is suspiciously empty, because a little voice in the back of your head says ‘if it’s not remarkable, it’s pointless’.
I’d ask “or is that just me”, but I know I’m not special, or alone in this. My problem is that when I started recognizing a penchant for perfectionism in myself, the only advice I could find was folks telling me to just write poorly. And conceptually I got it, but I have no idea how to actually commit to that. So, this post is me saying here’s what I do, and maybe that’ll help someone else.
The first thing I do is write in bullets. Listen, it’ll come as a surprise to no one that I’ve been on tumblr since 2016, and thus am very familiar with this format. But when I have a chapter that’s just staring me down, I take my summary, or my goal, or whatever I know I want to do in a chapter, and I start writing the beats. My task then transforms from making a chapter out of a sentence, to making a page out of a bullet point—much more achievable. It’s just a trick to ease myself into writing, and I’ve found it to be effective.
Another thing that makes a massive difference is writing offline. Whether that’s in a notes app on my phone, physically on pen and paper, into an alphasmart, or on a laptop in airplane mode, I simply have to put blinders on myself. If I have the option to distract myself from the fact that words aren’t coming easily, I will. And my browsing isn’t even all useless! Sometimes it’s valid (I am constantly fact checking myself), but the thing is, once I’ve clicked out of my draft for Noble Reasons, my mind really quickly goes into ‘well, since i’m already here…’ territory, which immediately catapults me into checking social media territory. Moderation is not my friend; there unfortunately must be total abstinence when it comes to internet access during drafting.
The next thing is keeping a running To-Update list. This is an excel spreadsheet of things that I either want to check, update, or add in to previous chapters. The intention of the list is to keep my present, instead of getting sidetracked into updating the mechanics of previous sections. Instead of going back to find a perfect place to insert backstory, add a line of dialog, drop a bit of foreshadowing, etc., I add a note to my To-Update list. That lets me stay in my current drafting flow, it lets me move forward that the assumption that ultimately the groundwork will have been laid for whatever I’m setting up, and gives me a great list of easy wins when I go back and review it. Who doesn’t love a checkbox.
The last thing is reminding myself that I am a good editor. It is a clawing need to go back and modify my words the moment they’re out of my mouth, but I think back to every essay I’ve ever covered in red ink—editing is more effective when you consider the whole. Then, it becomes a matter of reframing. Drafting for quantity is a matter of trusting 2-weeks-from-now!me to do a better job of reviewing the progress I’ve currently made, and honestly, she’s going to have a better go of it, because she’ll be looking at a fully fledged chapter rather than half a page.
Are these life changing tips? Probably not. But they get me results, consistently, and I hope that maybe they’ll do the same for you!
