Don’t edit before the 1st draft is complete. – Now that is some piece of advice I could have used many years ago. As it stands, I’ve developed a nasty habit of editing as I write. In fact, I’ve already re-written and revised those two sentences four times before I got to this one. And so it goes with my writing process. To be fair though, I only just heard this piece of advice last year, because until then, my writing had only been for me. When I finally decided it needed to be set free and I popped my head out into the world to see how others were doing it, I learned, this probably wasn’t the best way to write. And this is probably why it had taken me so long to finish any of my stories. (Ahem, years)
I typically tackle a story like this:
Ooo, – an idea – I write, write, write. Usually it starts off quite linear. I’ll write the story in order, for the first fifty pages and then I get excited because it’s shaping up to be a real solid story by now.
Then I stop, and I go back over the first fifty pages – I chapter them, I revise them and rewrite them
Over &
Over &
Over, again.
All the while this is happening, the 2nd act will come to me and I’ll get excited and write more, sometimes an ending will also come and I’ll write that. I’ll probably hit about eighty pages and I’ll go back and revise, rewrite and re-chapter everything I’ve written before – again.
Now, linear goes out the door. An ending will come to me, a rough one, I won’t type it out because I don’t want to commit to it yet. That is in a notebook that will travel around with me.
Then I’ll inevitably find a plot hole I could drive a mac truck through and I’ll get dejected and then I’ll put the manuscript away for a while.
I’ll be sad, and I’ll bury myself in books and BOOM, some more of the 2nd act will come to me (usually in the middle of the night) and I’ll pull out the sad mess of a manuscript and furiously write many, many more pages. Some won’t even have a place to call home in the manuscript, some I’ll write because it’s back ground on another character that will never end up in the manuscript at all and some will ultimately end up in another book altogether.
YAY, I feel like maybe this time around I’ll complete the story. I start writing the different pieces – like chunks of a puzzle that tend to miraculously fit in with what I’ve already written. I have to begin writing backwards so to speak, from the end of the story to the end of the 2nd act, if that makes any sense. Revising, rewriting and editing all at the same time. My editing hole, my editing hell. Believe it or not, this is not a complaint, I don’t hate it, it’s just often very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And really, my whole point to writing this blog was sort of a shout out to others like me, who dream of writing linearly and then end up hopping forward and backward and all around even before the story has been completed. It’s a bit like riding around this snippet of my characters life in the Tardis. 