Anyone who has written anything ever has probably encountered this problem:
“Oh this doesn’t sound right. I’ll just tweak this… Now that part doesn’t make sense. I’ll just go back and fix it really fast. I mentioned this building here, but turned it into a house there… I’ll just go back and fix that quickly…”
All of a sudden, 3 hours have gone by and I’ve written one paragraph that really isn’t that good.
I was so bad for it that I started and abandoned 3 books because it just wasn’t right. The prose wasn’t descriptive enough, or was too descriptive, or the flow was weird, or the plot didn’t make sense. I didn’t realize that it was never meant to be perfect, it was just meant to exist. I can’t make something good that doesn’t exist yet.
I took that thought into my current WIP and it has been life changing.
I just write. No judgements, no editing, no going back in my work and changing things. My only goal is to get it out of my head and onto the page. To make sure I don’t slip back into old habits, I specifically point out parts of my story that I’m excited to change in my second draft and even make notes on the side of my draft reflecting things that need to be changed. And then I leave it and carry on.
Right now I am 4 chapters away from finishing my first draft and its the closest I have ever gotten to finishing a draft, and its all because I have purposely written it “bad.”
Some chapters are 2,500 words, some are 500, the spelling and grammar mistakes I have made are straight up embarrassing and my prose is just…. well a child could have done better.
But it’s almost done, and its mine, and I love it.
Does anyone else do this? Has it helped your writing process or hindered it?
Every Book and Cranny 