"Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the edit." Will Self
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| Image courtesy of ningmilo / freedigitalphotos.net |
I have never had a problem with leaving the editing until the end, but I do still struggle with the internal editor who tells me what I'm writing isn't up to par. I wrote last week about the fear of being judged and I think this is a part of that.
The best way to cope that I have found is to never read back over the previous days writing when I am working on a novel. If I did, I would be so concerned with making it better I would never move forward. As I mentioned last week, if I suddenly decide to change something that happened earlier on in the novel, instead of going back and making the change I will insert a comment (highlighted in red so it's easy to spot) and then continue as though the change has already been made. It's really important for me to maintain forward momentum otherwise I find the project becomes stalled and it can be really hard to get going again.
How about you? Do you edit as you go or leave it all to the end?
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