Tag: not editing

I counted the docs in my Scrivener project, and yay! I made it past day 30. Total word count across 32 days: 20,704. Definitely not NaNoWriMo-level stuff, but better than nothing.

If this exercise has taught me anything, it’s that I have more ideas in me than I think. Of course, there’s a lot of junk in those 32 documents, but with some extra editing, I’ll have a few short stories to share soon.

It’s also taught me that I still compulsively edit as I’m writing. It’s a disease.

No, I’m not doing NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo (is that still a thing?). I don’t have it in me to start another novel, and I spend 90% of my day blogging or thinking about blogging.

(The other 10% is devoted to wondering if The X-Files is coming back for an 11th season. I fit the kids and my husband in there somewhere, too.)

But I am in a writing rut, so I’m challenging myself to write something creative every day for the next month. No restrictions on length, subject, and absolutely 100% no editing.

I see other fic writers publishing new work constantly and I can’t help but envy their prolificness. More importantly, I feel out of practice when I’m not working on something, and my current work-in-progress has been stuck in an editing loop for months.  Perfection is the enemy of progress, and I am notorious for editing as I write. I’ve edited this sentence twice already. This 200-word blog post took an hour.

See? Hopeless.

It’s time for a blank screen. I started a Scrivener document to which I’ll add a new page each day, and see what comes of putting my fingers to the keyboard (or putting pen to page, for the old-fashioned) for 30 days. As with NaNoWriMo, I’m locking my internal editor in a box and stuffing that box on the back of the highest shelf of the most remote mind-closet I can find.

…right after I finish editing this post.