Sunday 18 October 2009

Re-read or not to re-read and tweaking!?

I find myself posed with this problem daily - when I have written say 2000 words a little imaginary road block pops into my head and it says 'just go back over that, re-read it, tweak it' and then the next couple of hours I hone, improve and all but manicure my words into perfection. And then I feel lost, my plot plan is buried and I've deviated once again. Momentum has ground to a halt. I make a cup of tea and what do I do? ... I re-read it all again and think 'wow I bet I could shape that into a super short story'! :-)

3 comments:

Marcie Steele said...

That post made me smile. Although I never go back to look over my work on first draft, I daren't as it's mostly dialogue that comes out (I write 100 pages, then read that to get to 'know' the characters and then I don't reread, edit or look over it until I've completed the draft), I have hundreds of scenes in there and I look at them as individual short stories. I think all books are intermingled short stories...or maybe that's just me...x

Beth said...

Hi Serendipity! (Can I call you Serendipity?!)

Are you going to try NaNo in November? (See here if you don't know what NaNo is!) The focus there is very much on getting it written without even thinking about re-reading until November is over. Might help?

Anonymous said...

Some writers say never to "tweak" during the first draft: Don't get it right, get it written! Others edit fully as they go along. One of our Novel Racers has the mantra: write - mail - repeat. I think you need to find what works best for you.

For me, when I was writing, I would review the previous day's work and do some (very light) editing, before getting stuck into the next scene.

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