Write Now, Edit Later

Wednesday Creativity

Hmm, this looks a bit out of character for her. What is Wednesday Creativity? As I’ve previously told you in my Beyond the Page segment, I started school this September in a field I’m very passionate about – creative digital media. I’ll get back into how it’s been going. Still, for now, I want to explain that my assignments page has multiplied in October, and there are a lot of essays to write with fast-approaching deadlines. Just this Monday, I submitted my first one. So, exciting time.

I’ve decided to change my posting schedule because of the building workload and my commitment to this blog (and social media). Until now, I’ve put up a Character Introduction and Inspiration Thursday every week, followed by the Beyond the Page post on Sundays. I have a monthly timetable of what will be going where which I’ve now updated. For now (possibly until the end of the year), I’ll write a Wednesday Creativity segment covering both previously mentioned ones.

Topics themselves won’t be changing. I still want to tell you about my characters and share topics on my writing style, previous types and show more on my experience posting online (roleplaying). I also want to share more of my previous fan fiction stories, as a good few are still dear to me. Next week, there will definitely be a villain character feature in honour of the holiday.

Subject of this week’s post is inspired by a quote I often tell myself, but I couldn’t find out who said it first (but is used to it). Instead, I’ll share another quote:

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

Jodi Picoult

Honestly, I write my first drafts in great detail and fluff. This is an issue I have always suffered from and can be seen in these blog posts. I enjoy putting words on the paper and telling a story without worrying about finer details.

Over time, I understood the editing process better, primarily by working with my mom on her legal briefs and acting as her editor for many years. It allowed me to tap into my knowledge of grammar, which I don’t think about when writing my own work. You wouldn’t believe how many times I posted the first version of a text during my roleplay days. There would thankfully be some editor in the browser to point out my errors before hitting the post button.

Grammarly has become my best friend in the last while, especially in a previous couple of months. It was recommended to me by a dear friend, and I used to have it as an extension on my browser. Word has a good Editor add-on, which I use for school when writing within Microsoft Teams. I know plenty of other options are out there, so please tell me about them. I love hearing about new software.

As I learned more about the editing process, I enjoy the first draft experience. There is no care in the rules, no care in sentence styles… it’s all about my imagination and bringing the story onto the paper.

The outliner vs. pantser subject has appeared in an earlier blog post. Still, I will say now that even when I do write out an outline for something, my imagination can take me in an entirely different direction as the words come to me while typing.

When a draft is finished, I read and analyse it, looking into what came out in relation to the story and grammar. I should probably mention that I haven’t edited a Word document where I go line by line in years, as larger files tend to slow my software down. Instead, I side-by-side the old and new documents and re-type them into a fresh page.

You don’t even want to know how many versions of Just One exist on the laptop. A lot. That’s as much as I will tell you. I may go deeper into the subject another time, as I have a post coming up about the creation of the story.

Today, I want to hear from you.

How do you write? What’s your preferred choice of editing? Do you fix the errors as you go along or after writing? How much of an outliner are you? We could probably keep going with this, but for now, I’d love to hear about these things.

Before leaving you, though, I asked which software you use for editing? It’s definitely something I’d love to hear about.

As usual, like, share & subscribe.

I’d love to see your comments popping up.

This was blog one of the brand-new segment Wednesday Creativity, brought to you by this writer’s passion for writing. Despite my mention of a few programs, there are no sponsors.  

~Love, L.V.