If You Do This When You Write - You Need To Stop

Have you ever been in the flow of writing, typing out sentence after sentence of character arcs, settings, and powerful plot points when suddenly - you realize you meant to say something else a few sentences back so you scroll back up with the intent of changing just that one thing?

But it's never just the one thing. 

Many authors fall into the trap of editing and overanalyzing their work before it's even fully on the page and the end result pushed the authors so far off the track that they may never be able to reclaim their spot in the race. 

Don't edit as you write is one of those pieces of advice that writers and authors alike like to think doesn't apply to them. I'm only fixing one sentence - I'm only changing one thing. But then they go back to the sentence they left off at with no idea of what was supposed to come next. 

Editing as you write 

Kills Your Momentum 

It takes what was originally a free-flowing and uninhibited part of your story and bogs it down with things like logic before it's even had a chance to flourish. 

Creates Self-Doubt 

If you start going back through your work and begin pointing out everything that's wrong with it before you've even finished it you ruin the risk of never finishing it, because why would you? It's going to need a lot of work to turn it into a story so why should you bother?

BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT EDITING IS FOR.

No story comes straight from the author's brain as a neatly edited fully realized novel. There are bits that need to be taken out, bits that need to be added in, and a whole bunch of things that need to go off for testing to find out what they even were, to begin with. 

But that's not a process for what you are still discovering on the very surface of your novel, it's a process from when you know the being and the end and you just need to make the lines straighter than the funny jaggedy bits you have going on at the moment.

Best of luck. 

With love, 

B.K. xo xo

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