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Saturday, March 31, 2018

Stop Overthinking Things

A couple months ago, writing/blogging buddy Krystal Jane posted a graphic depicting a (real) conversation between Stephen King and George R. R. Martin. Save yourself a Google and go here to read her post. If you scroll down to read the comments, you'll see me lamenting my similarities to Martin and swearing to be more like King for my next project.

I did start my next book. (And yes, I did wind up going with Option 1.) And I'm trying. I really am. I'm trying to just make myself write write write write write write write write write, and worry about everything working out with editing later. It's been...okay. I got a solid, fairly lengthy (for me) opening chapter done in about eight days. And I started Chapter 2 today, even though I'm not 100% sure where it's going, other than "leading into Chapter 3 on my outline".

It's so easy to slip back into overthinking things, though. Even if something's not perfect, I'm trying to commit to just getting the damn words on the page, but then I'll be distracted by the possibility of word repetition, or varying sentence structure, or other things that can TOTALLY BE FIXED LATER ON. I don't know if it's necessarily a *bad* habit, since everyone writes in their own way, but I'm not crazy about being like this.

I used to just WRITE and worry about everything later. However, as soon as I started submitting things for publication and working with professional editors, it seemed that the more advice I got, the slower I wrote. The more I learned, the more I realized how much I didn't know, I guess. :P And while some have been better fits than others, every editor I've had the opportunity to work with has been super nice and supportive, so it's not like anyone's ever yelled at me for not being perfect. Maybe I need to frame my writing goals as keeping editors employed....

(Abrupt topic change! I think I'm set for the title on this one, so I'll make it official with a new tag!)

1 comment:

  1. I like the title! ^_^

    That graphic is still one of my favorite things. I definitely caved and edited a lot the first couple of weeks with my current project. I just can't help myself. And I definitely have chatter in my head from editors and stuff, but I've been able to keep moving, somehow. Maybe things are getting better? LOL!

    Yay for settling on a project and having a title already! I have a few titles I'm still juggling.

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