Quelling the Inner Editor

After having a blast writing the initial drafts for the first, three books in the Bryony series, I was thrilled to have finally outlined the prequel and corralled some increments of time to begin writing it.

I hadn’t gone far when the unthinkable happened. I stopped having fun. I wasn’t tired of the story or lacking in ideas. Rather, I two invisible intruders had taken up residence in my teeny tiny attic office: my internal copy editor and my internal line editor. They were perched on either side of my desk chair, monitoring every word.

Don’t get me wrong. All writers should self-edit their work and, as one quickly finds out, the rewriting and revision process is far more time-consuming and intense than laying out the original story. Obviously, when you’re writing that first draft, if some element is not working, you should listen to your editing self when it whispers that helpful advice in your ear.

Nevertheless, when my inner editors continously harp about this detail or that detail or, worse, scoop up the manuscript before it’s scarcely begun and start prematurely tearing apart my story, they kill my creative flow.

When I wrote Bryony, Visage and Staked! the words spilled out of me almost faster than I could type them. I was already two-thirds done with Staked! when Bryony’s first round of edits arrived in the mail. Moving through an additional two rounds has taught me a lot about writing and developed my editing skills. For that, I’m profoundly thankful.

It’s just now that I’m writing the first draft of a new book, I must remember to hang my editor’s hat at the door before I sit down to type. There will be plenty of opportunity to retrieve it later.