“The worst thing a writer can do is to launch an internal editor during the writing process. Nothing could be more stifling.” Howard Junker
Ed Champion is right that there isn’t “any uniform manner to writing a novel, except to get to the end of the damn thing,” but this has definitely been my worst problem when writing: fretting over the words so much that I don’t actually write them. This may be why I find the free-writing exercises I do locally with friends — and that, once upon a time, I did here. Even when whatever I’ve written isn’t any good, there’s great satisfaction in actually getting words down on the page.
Heather may suggest this is a perfect reason to take part in the upcoming 3-Day Novel Writing Contest — to have any hope of success, you can’t help but just write — but I don’t know…
C’mon…it’ll be fun! It’s much more liberating than you’d think. And it’d be nice to have a fellow blogger writing at the same time.
You know, some days, I sit there and I haven’t a fucking clue as to how I’m going to write. But that’s what deadlines — whether benign or more extreme exercises like Heather’s — do for us. When faced with the end of a revolver, a man will do much to live up to the required expectations. It is a writer’s first and foremost duty to ensure that the creative revolver is always there.