Don't look back ... You're not going that way
I'm sure you've all heard it said, at least once: "Don't look back ... You're not going that way. When it comes to writing, no truer words have been spoken than these when you're writing your first draft. I have it said, repeatedly, not to edit as you go. Especially if you are a newbie author. It can be death to your progress.
You write your first scene. It's been a good writing day but the day is over and it's now bedtime/dinner time/date night (fill in the activity) and so you save your work, shut your laptop down and congratulate yourself on getting the words down. Your happy with what you've written, with your progress. Tomorrow dawns, bright and breezy, and, coffee mug clutched close, you sit yourself in front of your laptop, read yesterday's work and think: "What??? This is nonsense! This doesn't work." And you edit. Finally, with forty five minutes left in your allocated writing time, you get down to writing a few words for the day. Day over, you save and walk away. Tomorrow ... wash, rinse, spin, repeat. Two weeks pass and you've got barely any progress to show for your trouble. Sound familiar?
This is, quite possibly, one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn so far on this writing journey of mine. I was a chronic offender until I entered a contest at the end of last year. One of the first things my assigned mentor said to me was: Whatever you do, keep writing. DO NOT edit as you go. DO NOT go back to the beginning each day. And most especially, DO NOT make any changes until I tell you to. If you do, you'll have the best polished first chapter and nothing else. Just write. Just put one word after the other and keep going.
I will not lie, it was HARD!!! But, she was 250% correct. I have written more in the first two months of this year than I wrote in the last five months of last year. 😳 That's right folks. I wrote almost double the amount of words from the beginning of January to the end of February this year than I did in the last five months of 2017. Why? Because I took my mentor's advice and I stuck to it religiously. And it worked!
I know it's not easy. If you're anything like me, you want it to be perfect before you move on. And moving on when it doesn't even come close to being perfect is difficult. But there is no denying the amazing feeling you get watching your word count rise steadily, instead of bouncing up and down as you delete and add during an editing frenzy, as you edit-as-you-go.
In closing I'd like to encourage you to take Natasha's advice and DO NOT edit as you go. Bribe yourself if you have to. Just keep getting those words down. Even if you don't think what you've written is any good, just keep writing. That's what the actual editing phase is for. Obviously there are those of us who are disciplined enough to be able to edit as they go but still keeping adding to their word count consistently. To those of you who can, you have my respect. But since I am not one of them, I'm not looking back ... I'm not going that way. Instead, I'm going to keep looking forward and getting those words down. When the time comes, I'll go back and do the edits.
Whatever works for you, keep going. You've got this. 👍
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