Saturday, February 20, 2010

Editing as You Go??? Good or Bad?



This morning I was looking through the blogs I follow and found Sarah's Confessions of the Unpublished with a post about Wannabe Writers and of course this perked my interests. Along with this interest and in continuance of my comment, I decided to post some pictures here of my new way of getting my story from my head and onto paper without the horror and time wasting of editing what I just pushed out of my brain and onto the screen. 

When I start to write, I usually don't know where it's going. It's just something that is trapped in my brain that needs to hit the screen. So, thats what I do. I type out everything as I see it in my head. The characters are built by my fingers upon the keyboard along with every other aspect of their world. Then, when I reach 10 or 11 pages, I scroll back up and do the most awful thing I could ever do to bring my thoughts and novel to a complete HALT. My fingers give life to my novel as they also taketh away. I edit. I delete, move things around, change the characters... you name it, I do it. And then after I finish all the editing and drowning all of my creativity, my novel doesn't move forward any more. So, the day before yesterday I was chatting to a good friend of mine and she showed me some notebooks that she had purchased to work on her screen writing and novel. 

Then LIGHTBULB, I decided to borrow her idea, (Thanks Lisa), and started writing every idea (characters, traits, dialogue, scenes, plots, settings, etc.) into the notebook. I moved everything (post-its, both laptops, hightlighters, my notebook, pens, camera, box of index cards, magazines, etc.) into my idea room (my couch in the living room) and started writing. With in about 3 hours I had 3 pages written. Sure, there are a lot of scribbles, hightlighting, and lines, but I actually have a plot, setting, and quite a great crew of characters all written in black ink in my cute little pink journal. This is the most progress I've made in weeks. I'm so happy. 

I find that by using a notebook, I don't get sidetracked trying to research ways to write a novel on the internet. I have found some great books on Amazon about writing, creating characters, etc. and bought a few. I haven't received them yet. A few of them are:


Those are just a few. 
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10 comments:

Lisa Miles said...

Yay for you! I'm so glad you're doing like that now. I like writing in my notebook then transferring it to One Note so I can move everything around. And I've learned, for myself at least, that I can't start the actual writing until I have the entire story plotted out. That's not to say I'm not open to changing things once I start writing.

Joanne said...

I guess you could consider outlining a form of pre-editing, lining up all the story pieces ahead of time. Any form of pre-organizing, like your notebooks, seems to help. Other than that, I do very little editing first draft, a little rereading and minor stuff, but save the major edits till the end when I have a better picture of the intent of the work.

Swimmer said...

Ok I am sooo going to steal that because I am writing down my plot line but not anything else.Now I will write down EVERYTHING!

sarah darlington said...

Starting a notebook in the beginning is such a good idea. That way you don't lose any of your good ideas. I think on my next novel I'll just plot everything out like that.

Unknown said...

That is such a great idea. I'll have to try this with my next book. Thanks!

Crystal Cook said...

I really love that idea, and I have done a lot of writing in the past in long hand, because we just recently got a computer. But I had a hard time organizing all my notes and keeping track of all the different ideas. Has anyone else had that problem? Glad you're making good progress:)

Raine Chasing said...

I've recently found that the computer can sometimes be your worst enemy when it comes to organizing your notes for a novel. Writing on paper makes it much easier along with the post-its and high lighters. I use the mini post-its to separate pages like tabs and on each post-it I put what section this page is for. It makes it alot easier to find what I'm looking for instead of having to read and search for everything. The high lighters I use to highlight characters, particular scenes or possible plots. So far so good - knock on wood.

Swimmer said...

I totally agree I always write down my stories.

Jeff King said...

I don't edit when I write it slows me down and makes me focus on the nuts and bolts of writing, rather than getting the first draft down as fast as the thrill of a new idea will take me... I have tried in the past to go back and edit my manuscripts and it has been a bad thing. You always change too much or get side tracked and stop progressing with your story and staying fresh with you characters.
For me, the best thing to do is just get in down on paper, then rewrite and polish... why waste the time doing it to a story that’s not complete, get it done the worry about it.

But to each their own.

kah said...

Such a cute notebook!
I'm new here but thanks for reminding me I used a notebook to make notes about my 1st novel. It worked fabulously. I need to do it again for my current WIP.