The Monster Editor

Don't delete, transform. A portal opens to another world! Fairies everywhere! Hunky hero appears out of nowhere! It's NaNoWriMo, anything goes. Except, of course, editting. And certainly not deleting! Keep typing and don't look back.

*hums* Just keep writing, just keep writing...

my mom says i'm Quirky. you can just call me Weird.
~
http://starsunite.blogspot.com/2009/10/nanowrimo-in-beginning.html

I have a room in my basement. It's small and dank. All it has is a desk, a chair, and an old laptop with no Internet connection.

On day 1 of NaNoWriMo, I announce to the world, "I'm going down to the basement to write!"

As my internal editor follows me into the room, I spin around quickly, grab him by the scruff, throw him bodily forward, run from the room, and lock the door behind me.

Then I go upstairs, make a nice up of cocoa, and start writing.

In all seriousness, IGNORE YOUR EDITOR. He WILL go away. Change your font color to your background color and turn off auto-spellcheck so you don't even see the red squiggly lines. If you can't do that, put something in front of the screen so you can't see it (Though check occasionally to make sure you are still in your word processor!).

Remember, NaNo is not about getting it right. It's about getting it written.

I'm using the patch: I'm trying to ween myself off of editing slowly. Well, slower than the 'chain up your Inner Editor, and don't feed him much' approach others have outlined.

When I'm ABSOLUTELY SURE that I'm not going to progress any more for one writing session, I go back and reread what I've just written. If I can make an edit that will actually ADD words to my total, such as rejiggering a description so that it's more thorough, then I'll do that.

I throw my I.E. a couple of bones, now and again, and he doesn't bug me when I really, really don't like the paragraph I just wrote, and I'm now writing another one beneath it that accomplishes the same goal in a way that doesn't suck, so that later (in Dec., preferably), I can just delete the offending piece of ...er...prose.

Ha, that's funny. My I.E.'s dead and gone, killed by my Creative writing teacher. I swear, if the school board wouldn't yell at her for it, she'd rip the 'delete' and 'backspace' buttons off of our keyboards. D=

Enthusiasm: 30%
Energy: 0%
Concentration: 60%
Sanity: .4%
Best Daily Word count: 5,000
MC status: Not even god can save him now...

This is my 3rd NaNo and this novel is giving me the most trouble. I've deviated from my outline twice, once almost to the point of killing my male MC. I've moved the story forward, adding new scenes in page 10 that should be in page 2 but I keep going forward. I've learned a lot about my characters (and I spared the boy's life) and my new plot is much better than the one in my outline. I have a clearer view of what will happen on page 20 and 50 and getting there does not seem so daunting. The trick is not to go back and reread - it slows you way down and that editor practically crawls out of your skull, red pen and all. Just keep going forward. It doesn't have to be in sequence or make complete sense; it just needs to be written.

This is my first NaNo and I decided to write off the cuff rather than planning out the story. I know how my mind works and I knew going in that any outline I made would be thrown out the window on the first day. I'm just using this experience to get used to writing for long periods. I did go back and add to earlier chapters, but only keep a sense of cohesion in the story.

"Then drop on the deck and flop like a fish"

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This is great advice. I NEED to edit every once in a while too. I use a similar method to feed the bastard inside me. I have begun only adding to, as Zerozilla has suggested. The other tool I allow the IE to use is a highlighter and some parenthesis for portions of crap I have written that obviously belong somewhere else. He is not allowed to move the offending blather, just to make a yellow suggestion...

ryan lind

Opening Sentence: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Do you think that will sell, or is it kind of cheesy?