Writers can be their own worst enemies.

The biggest culprit hindering aspiring writers that I hear about is is self-editing. It can lead to instant writer’s block, and prevents wonderful ideas and thoughts from ever moving beyond the realm of the mind.

Fact #1: nobody writes a good first draft, including you. So put that concept out of your mind. If you expect to write perfect prose at the beginning, put down the pen right now. It’s not going to happen.

Fact #2: The first draft is a core dump of your ideas. It’s your first attempt to put them on paper. As you write, new ideas naturally flow out, totally unrelated at times to what you have previously written. That’s great. That’s the writing process.

Fact #3: Editing your initial writing as you go is a sure-fire way to squelch your creativity. The moment you start criticizing your work - which is what editing is - you become skeptical about its quality. Not a good thing!

If you think about it, trying to edit your story before it is completed is illogical. Since you don’t know how it’s going to end (trust me - stories tend to go in directions you didn’t plan), how can you make changes? Leave the story alone and keep writing. That’s the goal of the first draft.

Fact #4: Premature editing = writer’s block. Particularly for a new writer. Because you allow yourself to become disappointed in the “quality” of your work (because you’ve forgotten it’s a first draft), you stop writing. And since every author advises that daily writing, like daily exercise, is essential to the creative process, you’re shorting yourself out. 

I learned this fact the hard way. I tend to edit myself automatically. But once I gave myself permission to write “whatever”, the story really began to flow out. Ultimately the first draft of Crossover was 454 pages long. 

Subsequently, it was rewritten completely two times, edited five more, then read out loud twice to catch hidden errors. The final version was over 100 pages shorter, and whole chapters were lopped out.

I have the original manuscript, and get a big chuckle out of some of it. There are chunks that I did keep because by some miracle, they came out beautifully. But I would say 95% was reworked and rewritten before the book was finally published.

So, give yourself a gift. Forget about editing and get writing!