Last week, I talked about letting go of that internal editor and just write. Did you do that?

I, on the other hand, had editing to do of a short story that I will be shopping around in a week or two.

I hope you were able to get some writing done this week. It was a good week for it. Too cold to be outside, snow still on the ground and of course, today the Bears losing.

All are good reasons to just shut out the world and write. Especially that Bears lost.

I have been playing with the idea of putting all four short stories into a book format and publishing it via one of the new e-book publishers to see how well it will sell.

If you think that is a good idea, leave a message at the bottom letting me know your thoughts.

Quarterly essays coming up at work, so not going to have much time to write with all the grading. Only have 150 of them to do.

Anyway, have a great week and let me know your thoughts.

Until next week

John

The other day we were talking about graphic novels and how they used the graphics to describe action and emotions. All of my students knew that the words used in a literary novel to describe everything, were not needed in a graphic novel.

We went on talking about writing and I explained that the last thing you want to do is worry about mistakes as you type your work. When you’re typing the second sentence, your mind is already down at the bottom of the page or maybe even farther along in the story.

Most novelists already have an idea where the story is going so when they type, they just type, shutting out that inner editor and getting the words down on paper. Just as I am doing here. Looking back just now, I see two mistakes that will need to be fixed when I finish.

In writing a story, the first requirement is to get the story written down. Then go back and edit for mistakes and finally edit for gaps in the plot that need fixing.

This is hard for most people because they want to correct things as they go along, which takes them so much more time to write the story. They are worried that the misspelled word up in paragraph two will be left there and someone important will see it. They can’t go on knowing it is there. They must stop, go back, and fix it now as it is playing on their mind and won’t allow them to see the next scene because that mistake is glaring at them.

When you sit down to start writing, tell yourself, I am not going to worry about mistakes. I am just going to get this story down on the page. Then stick to that thought throughout the first draft.

Proofreading and plot corrections can be made another day.

Now go write.