Hey everyone! We’re here again with another post that is on time. Today’s post is something that I’ve never really had a hard time avoiding but I know a lot of writers do and it’s something that can stop every writer from really writing a good story and enjoying it while they do it and then others can enjoy it. There are always exceptions but in general this should be avoided which is why it is included in the ten commandments of writing. So without further ado…
Ten Writing Commandments: Never Edit While You Write
To preface this post, I would like to state that editing is great. Editing is really important to any good story. Any story that is a single rough draft without any editing is never as good as a story that has been edited at least once. Editing is one of the most helpful things that any writer can find because it takes a good story and makes it into a great story. Now that I say that let me make a really bold statement.
NEVER EDIT WHILE YOU WRITE
There are several reasons for this. The first is that editing while you write can really distract you from what you are writing. If you write a page then stop to edit the last page that you wrote really deeply and you nitpick at everything then sometimes by the time you get to the next page it’s been several days since you actually wrote the last page and suddenly there are two pages right next to each other in your story that don’t have the same voice or style and there might be details missing. This again can be fixed later in final editing but if you didn’t nitpick edit while you were writing it wouldn’t happen and the final editing process becomes easier.
The second reason for this is motivational. Writing is hard. It’s hard every day of the year for every day of the week for every hour of every day. Sometimes it’s more fun which makes it seem easy but building a whole world with unique characters, cultures, and geography is not an easy thing. Even if you enjoy the writing that you are doing and the story that you are building, sometimes there are moments where you just don’t want to sit down and write a single word. If you are nitpicking editing WHILE you are writing, writing the story loses it’s fun. It becomes more stressful than entertaining.
The third and final reason is that it affects your writing style. I already talked about how your story can have little hiccups if you are pausing your writing to edit the page instead of continuing with the story. But another equally annoying thing that editing while your writing can cause is variations in writing style from chapter to chapter. While editing you can begin to see patterns in your writing style. Say your editing chapter 5 before you’ve written chapter 6. You notice that you have too much description in your writing but not enough dialogue. So, you change your story to have more dialogue and less description. Then when you write chapter 6 you are busy paying attention to the dialogue and the description levels. You finish chapter 6 but you are too tired to continue writing that day so you set it aside. The next day you come back and decide you don’t want to start by editing chapter 6. You start writing chapter 7 focusing a little on dialogue and description levels. You’re on a great roll today so you start writing chapter 8. You finish chapter 8 and walk away. A few months later you’ve finally finished the first draft. You’re reading through it editing when you come across something really weird.
Chapters 1 through 5 are really well written. Equal levels of dialogue and description. Chapter 6 is rather well written but then chapter 7 and 8 slowly get worse and then the writing style picks back up on chapter 9. This is a discrepancy in writing style that was caused by nit pick editing while writing. It makes it really annoying to edit later on.
There is not really any special skills to avoiding editing while you’re writing. My best advice is to try your best not to do it. Focus on what your writing rather than how you’re writing it. Your first draft does not need to be edited or perfect. You’re first draft is supposed to be the general ideas of the story. Make sure that’s what your story is. Editing is a later step in the writing process. Not a step that is concurrent with writing the first draft.
One last final statement as I finish off this post. Editing does help some people. Some people can edit while they write and avoid all of those three problems that I wrote about in this post. If that’ you, great! Keep it up! If you’re writing is what you want to make it, keep doing what you are doing. But if you are struggling with one or all three of the problems, I wrote about then your problem may be editing while writing. Stop it. Writing is something that is very hard, but it doesn’t have to feel hard if you’re doing it right.
With that this post has been concluded for this week. Haha. I hope that this post was helpful. We only have two posts left for this series. I hope that you enjoy them as they come. If you like my posts don’t forget to like, subscribe, join the blog member page, and share on social media. If you came from my social media pages don’t forget to follow so you can stay updated on all new posts. And don’t forget…
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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