Stave off Your Self-editor and Pour Words onto the Page — It Leads to Good Writing
And more content.
If I could give you one lesson on writing, it would be to write shitily first. Yes, according to the Urban Dictionary, shitily is an actual word.
One of my favorite books of all time is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Within her glorious text about life and writing, she writes about the “Shitty First Draft” as a necessity to get to good writing.
Almost all good writing begins with a terrible first effort.
That is why so many of us struggle to sit down and write; we instinctively know our first attempt won’t be a masterpiece. But if you want to be a writer, you must make an effort. Writing calls to us and is often painful, especially for perfectionists. Often, our perfectionism kills our creativity.
One way to just write already is to turn off your self-editor (perfectionism) and write, start at the ground level, not the penthouse.
Whether you are Hemingway, J.K. Rowling, or Anne Lamott, when you sit down to write, your first word, sentence, paragraph, will most likely not be gold.
Gold gets mined in the editing process.
One way to get to a lot of gold is to write a lot of words every day.
Get it out of your mind and onto the page. You need something to work with, and the more words you have to work with, the better.
We are afraid to write poorly
We would all love to be on the 12th floor of our writing ability, but we have to start at the ground level, the shitty first draft.
There is no quick writing tip to get you to the 12th floor; the only way you can get there is to write poorly first and keep going. You have to take the stairs, one step at a time.
So many people find this difficult, and why so many just stop writing one day and never start again. Our strong affinity for perfection gets in the way and stops us from writing at all. We are afraid to write poorly.
David Foster Wallace admonished, “If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.”
You have to start where you are, where your writing is, your basement.
We are all different.
My basement may be lower than your basement or vise versa. Don’t compare yourself to other writers. The fastest way to unhappiness is to do so.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is you start writing.
Our affinity for perfectionism is where people fail; they get stuck and stop never to start again. I’ve done that several times in my life, not just with writing.
Only when I let go of perfectionism did I have the courage to keep going.
If your affinity for perfection is too high, you will never do the work. Doing the work is hard. Writing is never going to be as beautiful on the page as it is in your mind. You have to work it out on the page, and you can’t do that until you write something down.
Lamott,
We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time.
Stream of consciousness or Morning Pages
If you are struggling to sit down to write, one way to make words flow is by writing a stream of consciousness where you are not allowed to edit.
Another great exercise for writers is Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages from her groundbreaking book, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.
“Without The Artist’s Way, there would have been no Eat, Pray, Love.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
The task, to write first thing upon waking — preferably longhand — three entire pages. No editing!
Having permission to write freely without having to edit for grammar or spelling allows you to write quickly without censorship. Writing as close to waking in the morning allows you to write from as close to the dream state as possible and tap your subconscious for ideas.
Free writing allow you to:
- Discover your creativity. It helps to generate ideas and breakthrough creative blocks. Stream of consciousness writing unearths many nuggets of interesting thoughts each morning, which you can expand on in your later drafts and editing as a way to generate ideas for blog posts.
- Aids in silencing your inner critic. You know the loud, obnoxious writer-critic in all of us, the one that sometimes creeps in with, “you aren’t good enough. So many writers are better than you. Hang I up, kid.”
When you prevent yourself from editing while you write, you will have more writing to work with in the editing process.
To access beautiful writing, write well, and write sentences that are clear and concise in service to the reader, you need more writing to work with. Stave off the self-editor and pour words onto the page. It’s difficult but it’s how you get to good writing. This can be hard in the beginning, because as writers, we don’t want to write poorly, even when we aren’t sharing, so we edit as we go along.
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. — Lamott
Most importantly, when you start a habit of writing without editing for at least one hour a day, you create a regular writing habit, a writing habit that sticks.
Homework
For one hour a day, just write. Don’t edit.
If you are having trouble not editing while you write, some tips below.
Hacks
- Turn off your monitor, so you can’t see the words you’re writing or mistakes. You’re getting the words out there. You are just writing. It is not for sharing yet.
- Turn the text white on whatever word processing system you’re using. Make the text white, so you can’t see it on the page.
You have time to write
You have plenty of time to write — you may not use that as an excuse.
Lack of time is a lack of priorities.
If I’m too ‘busy’, it means I’ve made choices that put me in that position. If I’m too busy to write, it’s a cue I need to reexamine my systems and rules. Because writing is a priority in my life, it takes place once a day.
Perfectionism is when you get so overwhelmed by the enormity of starting to write, that you don’t write. If you let it paralyze you, you won’t write. That is why we edit later and write now.
Write on.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering perfectionist. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
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