hypercritic

The trouble with the draft-edit-publish strategy is that in practice it often goes something like this:

  1. Write a whole bunch of words. Just vomit them right out.
  2. Get distracted.
  3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 an arbitrary number of times between zero and a lot.
  4. Resist the urge to consider the piece finished.
  5. Wait a while. Step away from the computer. Maybe sleep.
  6. Decide to do the editing thing.
  7. Internal monologue: “What the hell is wrong with you? Delete everything. It’s all terrible. Why did you even think you should write this?”
  8. Delete everything.

Occasionally I salvage something I like instead of deleting everything or inflicting yet another baroque, stream-of-consciousness word salad on the world at large. 1

Occasionally.

  1. The latter is a problem largely because of the way it makes me cringe in embarrassment and refuse to read anything I’ve ever written.) ↩

Tags: writing editing