There are times when I hate writing. Because I get writers block like everyone else? Yes. Because I run out of ideas from time to time? Yes. Because I lose confidence in my skills as a writer from time to time? Yes. Because I have been known to start on something then stop because I'm afraid of what people will say when they read it... oh you get the idea. But mostly its because of two things: the first being my concentration is absolute garbage-I have ADHD like you wouldn't believe (and no, I'm not I'm not kidding)- but the other is simple: I'm a slow writer.
I know that that in of itself isn't bad, but there are times when I have a clear idea of what I want to write and then when I get started it takes me hours or even days to write one thing, even when it should take less than 15 mins. The why of this I only have a faint picture of. Some of it has to do with all the stuff I mentioned above. And the other part, I suppose, has to with to do with my weird sense of perfectionism. I write one sentence or a word, read over it, don't like it, and then try to go back and fix it. Same thing with grammar and spelling-something I've never been that great at to begin with. I go to fix it and then 7 times out of 10; I inadvertently end up making it worse. It gets even worse when I've already started a project and I start to feel as my middle isn't as good as the beginning. Most of time I plow a head and tell myself that I can go back and fix it later, but then there are times when my internal editor screams so loudly at me that it destroys any momentum I might have had. I just want to shoot that little bastard sometimes.
Now I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, but this has just been bothering me for a long while now and I have no idea how to fix it and make myself write faster, at least not without cutting corners and that I am not willing to do.
Maybe I'm just being neurotic here and all of this is just in my head and I'm worrying about nothing. But this sort of thing just comes with the territory I think. As Turman Capotie once said (at least I think it was him) "Show me a writer who isn't a little bit neurotic, and I'll show you a typist."
And with that, I'm gone.
The internal editor is responsible for more than one author's problems with writer's block.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that helps me is to write in an environment that does not constantly give you feedback about what you are doing wrong. Red and green squigglies only take you out of "the writing zone" and interfere with your creative process. No matter how much editing you try to do as you go, it is never going to be enough. Writing and editing are very different mindsets, and switching back and forth is bad for productivity, as you've learned. (I'm not saying it's easy to turn off your internal editor--I have to fight the same problem all the time.)
If you have to, write each scene in a simple and dumb text editor like Notepad or WordPad. Alternatively, you can turn off all the distracting features in Word.
Either way, the most important thing is to get your words out. You are probably going to have to edit your writing in multiple passes later anyway. But if you have no story, you have nothing to edit!
Thanks for the advice Daniel. I take it ^_^.
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