The Writer’s Well

I know that sounds weird. Let me explain what I mean. Too often the desire to turn out perfect content, flawless in every way, brings us to our proverbial knees. We have personal blogs, but we never update them anymore. We are so busy trying to make each entry perfect that we never write the entry. We are overwhelmed before we even start. We have novels and short stories we are working on, but our fear that someone won’t like it, or that the words we choose aren’t the absolute correct, pristine words to capture the moment that we never write at all.

Write now, edit later. Make that your motto in the coming days and weeks. Stop striving for immediate perfection. It cripples you. Just write. Let your typos show, warts and all. Force yourself to ignore the glaring errors only you can see. Then, just before you click “save” or “publish” do one quick error check. Do not allow yourself major revisions or sentence rewrites. Do not allow yourself to do anything more than adjust your punctuation and fix one or two spelling errors. Make yourself take no more than one read-through (or about five minutes) to correct small errors on the page. Stop obsessing yourself into silence.

The words will be there later to go back and make perfect. For today, and the next few weeks, increase your productivity by adopting the Write Now, Edit Later mantra with me. Forget plot. Eschew direction. Just write. Write Now, Edit Later.

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