Editing while writing

I have been struggling with that for years. I really noticed it when we were doing word sprints and the write-ins. The first thing I did was turn off my special checker. Those little annoying red and green lines automatically have me editing and so far it has helped markedly. (thanks Livvie for the recommendation!)

I have a tendency to edit as well. My tricks to mitigate it are:

1) Never ever ever scroll back.
2) Allow yourself to change words or rewrite sentences occasionally, to stave off the need to do more (it's like people on a diet having a cookie every once in a while so they don't break down and eat a whole gallon of ice cream).

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

Twilight Time, I have exactly the same problem. I'm in publishing and an editor by training (although being an editor does not make one a good writer, unfortunately). I don't allow myself to look back AT ALL. I can look at the last sentence I wrote when I pick up the next day, just so I know where I am. And I can correct a typo in that sentence if I see it. But for now, this is a contest. It's just about the word count, which is pretty liberating. Quantity, not quality. Shallow in a literary sense but there ya go, that's what Nanowrimo's really about.

What's interesting is that it's also how many published authors actually work. I didn't realize that till now. No wonder I never got past those 3 pages of priceless, polished, prose. By the end of those 3 pages I was exhausted. And nauseous. And hated myself.

My reward is the promise of reading 50,000 words of unedited text on December 1. Just thinking about all those sharpened pencils awaiting me at the end of the month makes me jump for joy. Yippee!

Good luck.

I actually worked out a deal with my inner editor. After the last few years of getting derailed in the middle of the month when my writing process went on strike because my inner editor was screaming ARRRRRGH every time I tried to write, I decided the "don't edit at all!" rule wasn't working.

So our deal is this:
The inner editor is allowed to swoop in only to turn a paragraph where I am telling everything into a dialogue. So in the middle of writing, I scroll up, find a dense block, I am allowed to turn it into dialogue.

So far, it has turned into a net gain of at least 200 words each time, so that's a win. My inner editor is appeased and I end up slightly ahead.

I've also given it permission to go back and insert in new scenes to explain a particularly weak section. For example, I was really unhappy with my Chapter 1, so I went back and put in a new scene. I kept the original scene - it just happens halfway through the chapter instead of at the start. I am doing the same with the Prologue now. The *story* is not progressing very quickly, but the word count is going very well. I am gaining word counts, but I am still undecided on whether this is a good rule or not.

Basically, my rule is edit==ok. delete==bad.

Hi!
Sooo happy to see that I'm not alone. I want NaNo experience to be super fun and it wouldn't be if I couldn't make my writing a bit 'cleaner'. My 'breaks' consist of editing, which has added a significant word count, so I am also very pleased. Good-luck! :) I'll have to work on the NOT deleting part though.

Orangetunawriter

Wow, I'm glad to see it's not just me then :) I have a couple of rules for myself: I am so picky about word choice and spelling, that I have to let myself go back and change little things here and there. I can jump around within whatever I've already written and add paragraphs and scenes. BUT if i feel like something isn't working, or that horrible urge to delete comes over me, I do a couple of things: I make notes to myself and put them in red, so I can go back to them in December OR I will put a strike line through whatever text I don't want and then move that section to a "dump box" that I have at the top of my novel. It's basically a text box near the title, and I can just throw whatever I don't want in there which means A) I don't ever have to look at it again and B) it still counts toward the total word count! This has worked for me so far. Good Luck!

Yes. It hurts not to edit. Right now, I'm eve leaving in the spelling errors. If I start that, I won't stop at anything.
Write-on!

Me too, kwibbles. (I also work in publishing and am trained as an editor, and am, in fact, in the midst of editing a book about writing right now. Did I just blow your minds or what?) I've been operating under a slightly different modus operandi with my writing all year, wherein I allow myself to go back and edit as I write, so not editing is making me crazy because the habit is instilled otherwise, but I know I'm gonna start cutting and moving and getting stalled if I do.

Here's what helps me:

1) DON'T LOOK BACK! Jennifer Crusie (who is a romance writer, but an awesome one) had a post on same recently where she called her NaNo strategy "Don't Look Down!" and I think it's kind of the same thing. You gotta turn off the editorial part of your brain and just keep moving forward. Make the text white if you have to, or move the window so you can't see more than the line or two above what you're currently writing.

2) It's okay to sweat the small stuff. I have been fixing typos and spelling mistakes, only because I'll give myself an ulcer fretting over them if I don't. So, heed the call of the red squiggly line, but don't do any substantive text editing.

3) For goodness sake, turn off grammar check. This just makes good sense for life. Grammar check sucks. Nobody cares about passive voice. It's wrong half the time anyway.

4) Sprinting. Trying to write a lot in ten minutes is antithetical to editing as you write. I've been getting a little better about letting things go every time I do a sprint, and also sprints have been taking my novel in strange directions when I'm forced to think on the fly, which is not really relevant, but I find it entertaining.

I think it's also probably a good idea for the editorially-minded among us to think about something else between an editing job and writing the novel. I know I tend to be more critical if I've spent all afternoon proofreading someone else's work.

~Erin
New York City Municipal Liaison
blog | twitter

I'm jealous. For me, editing is always a major wordcount drain. In school, projectmates took to calling my red editing pen 'The Pickax'. They could send five pages in for a team paper, but it would only be three by the time i pasted it in...

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

I use writing software called WriteRoom (mac only) that is a full-screen text editor. It's basically intended to take the computer you spent many hundreds of dollars on, a technological wonder, and reduce it down to a bare bones text composing machine. Just green text on a black background.

There's a setting in the software that lets you control the "margins" around the writing area. If you set those margins really big you end up with an area about as wide as a magazine column and only 10-ish lines long. Just don't let yourself scroll up, and there's not much you can edit.

The software is actually free for the next 6 days as part of a MacHeist bundle: http://www.macheist.com

Buz

Thanks to each and every one who replied to my original post. I am taking many of the tips to heart and will try some of them out tomorrow.
I am using the StoryMill writing program for this competition and one of my biggest mistakes was not getting it way ahead of time and get to know it real well before using. Heading towards the end of the 1st week I have pretty much given up and am just using the chapter writing section, not the scenes, etc. At one point I was writing more in the outline section than I was of the novel!
Appreciate all of the help and encouragement.
Thanks from my heart, extended by my poor permanently curved fingers and aching wrists,
~Twilight Time.

~Twilight TIme.

I had two documents working in tandem with my novel: a rough outline of events, and a list of people, places, and events, so i could look at that instead of scrolling up.

Then my computer crashed.

My novel survived intact (thank goodness for small favors), but all my notes, *poof*, gone. So i guess my recommendation, should you find yourself writing more outline than novel, is to crash your computer.

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

If it's an extremely crappy sentence and not worth re-writing, it goes. I ignore all the red and green squiggly lines in my Word doc, however a blue line makes me say huh? and I will stop and figure out what is wrong. I was a proofreader for decades so it's ingrained in me, I don't allow typos whatsoever. If there is a paragraph I find that doesn't help the story along or even iffy dialogue, I highlight it and italicize it. It still counts toward the 50k even if I don't like something about it, and it will find its way out after November 30th.

Good grief, orangetuna, you're already finished! Congratz!

Editing is why I'm only at 8500 and change.

this isn't an issue for me, but if it were, and if it were impeding my word count, here's what i'd do:

1. turn the text white (or whatever color the background of your word processing program is)
2. disable automatic spelling and grammar check, so you don't have to deal with squiggly lines
3. write, write like the wind blows during a hurricane!

i'm just saying. it would probably be weird, but it might help.

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

Hi! Thank you so much! I was out with a super bad headache for one full day, I've never had one of those before, they really knock you out, but I'm back and ready to attack NaNo again. Good-luck to you! :)

Orangetunawriter

Just writing here to get a post number. Will actually respond to this topic later.

PEN! how are you!?!?!

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

your word count makes me want to cry. but in a good way. (esp since you're not my nemesis! ) ;-)

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

Your fun, thank you for making me laugh so much every morning between 12-3 am when I check my mail. You guys are nutty and it is appreciated. :) Good-luck, you'll get there soon enough.

Orangetunawriter

My inner editor is the bane of my existence!! *headdesk*

However, I will admit I am slightly better at it now than I was two NaNos ago and this time, when I do edit, I end up expanding and fleshing out more of the scenery than deleting things.

the problem is, said inner editor is looking at the way I built towards Climax Point 1 and is thinking, maybe it's a little bit too little.... So i'm adding extra scenes as I go.

The problem is, I'm approaching the 'characters separate and get into a LOT of crap' scene....and i'm losing steam. There's too little coffee in the building.

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The Index, Book 1: Mages (2006w)
Book 2: Secrets (2007w - coming soon!)
Book 3: Lineage (2008w)
Book 4: Revival (2009w)