Excuses, excuses, excuses… We tell them to ourselves. We give them to others. What’s stopping you from writing?
How about that voice in your head that doubts your use of vocabulary (“should I write in US English, UK English or Canadian English?”), or doubts your consistency of style (“you don’t really know how that character speaks yet”)… it’s the voice of:
the Nit-Picker Copyeditor
A valuable voice later in the writing process for identifying and polishing the details of consistency and flow in your writing, but letting this voice into your head too soon and you can be stopped before even before you start.
A solution?
Make a writing schedule for yourself. Yup. I said that. Real dates on a calendar (or on a clock if the work is short enough). Give enough time for your Wild Creative Brain to work with free reign on the first draft. Then have a specific date (or time) for Nit-Picker Copyeditor to come back in and work with the whole drafted work instead of the words in progress. I bet you’ll find Nit-Picker Copyeditor back pedals on criticism when the whole work is available… it’s not as bad as Nit-Picker Copyeditor thought it would be. Besides that, Nit-picker Copyeditor loves details so much, the specific date/time will be acceptable to leave you alone so you can truly get on with your writing.
How else do you deal with Nit-Picker Copyeditor?
Cheers and happy drafting to you,
Deb
P.S. Since copyediting makes me think of revisions, have you seen and liked or commented on my posting to win a Writing / Budgeting pencil? Here ’tis is you missed it: https://debpatz.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/how-writing-a-budget-is-like-writing-a-script-revisions-and-a-wee-spring-contest/
YES – setting a time every day that is only for writing, only for actually doing some writing, is essential to getting it done. It is way to easy to put off writing every day unless you are used to working to a deadline… for the stall or nitpcker there, you can tell yourself your deadline for that day is 2 or 3 pm or whatever time and you have to have written at least two paragraphs between x a.m.and y pm – it is easy then to get lost in the story and the characters quickly take over…and the story gets written before you know it… Thanks for reminding me Deb. Now, for me to get back to my blog, my book, my script my…. did I say blog?
I’m hot and cold on deadlines. I love the spontaneity of a flexible schedule, but also find I need an overall deadline to keep the fire burning.
Cheers,
Deb