Friday, January 14, 2011

Writing vs. Editing

I've heard from long time writers that sometimes it's difficult to write or they just don't "feel it".  Brimming with ideas I hadn't ever had that problem.  I wrote what I thought about or what was happening in my life.  While that's "journaling", it's also writing.  Getting started can be difficult and easy to procrastinate.  While others will explode if they don't write something down now!

Writer's block--it's the condition in which nothing is good enough to write.  Words cannot express the feelings you wish to convey.  Writer's block really is your inner editor saying you suck.  Fire your inner editor.  She's in the way.   

Tuck that self-edit-mode away.  Give yourself patience.  Draw, journal, rewrite a luliby from childhood.  Laugh.  There are few remedies that can relieve stress like laughing.  What are you going to write about?  Some issue you have yourself?  We all have life lessons to learn.  Playing it through a character is really what we write about in fiction, isn't it?  We have some relation to the problems our characters have.  So write about your flaws.  Just look at them in acceptance and then write about how to fix it.  Maybe in the process you'll find the perfection in your own flaw.

Writing is putting pen to paper and letting it flow.  Editing is going through it, reworking and asking yourself WTF?  But don't let editing take over the creative process.

No comments: