My Inner Editor

When I sat down at the start of November last year and decided that this year, finally, I was going to well and truly finish a novel (I have several novels in various states of unfinished heaped on my hard drive and a few that are actually finished, though they are generally very poor) I tried to figure out how I was going to do it. The #1 reason I end up pushing a novel onto the “finish it later” heap is because of my inner critic. And half the time I confuse my inner critic with my inner editor.

My process seems to go something like this:

1. Write a few sentences (up to a paragraph, but vary rarely more than that)
2. Read back over it and wince at how terrible it is
3. Try to fix it
4. Delete most of it
5. Write a little more in salvage mode
6. Ask myself who, exactly, I think I’m kidding when I say I’m a writer
7. Save and close the file, generally with a net loss as far as word count goes

Really, most of that is my inner critic posing as my inner editor. So I determined (and really, it was a force of the will) that I would not allow either one near me for the duration of my novel. Until I wrote “The End” (which I’ll go ahead and say I didn’tactuallywrite at the end of last page…but I thought about it), there would be no critique allowed. My focus was to keep booty in chair and get words on screen.

It worked.

At the end of December I had 90,000 words (roughly) that all swirled together into a complete and cohesive plot. A novel! I was overjoyed. So I went back through and “edited” it – tightening it up here and there, but mostly still keeping to the “don’t be so critical” mindset. And that’s where it stopped working…because now that I’m looking at it again (after a paid critique and some good lessons), I’m realizing that there is some stuff there that really needs my inner critic, and other stuff that just needs a visit from the editor. And other parts that probably just need a visit by the delete key.

So now comes the challenge of balancing that creative piece with the critical piece (and keeping the critical bit in check so that it’s helpful and not just “Man, I stink and should just give up” critical, because it’s very easy for me to go there and not so easy to get out of it once I do.) I’ve gotten some good suggestions for self-editing, but if you’ve any of your own to share, I’d love to hear them!