Switch your inner editor off - and fly free! - by Liz Carter

For the first time, I’ve joined into NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this November. NaNoWriMo runs every November and encourages writers to plot progress every day towards 50,000 words of a novel (or any kind of writing.) You’re also encouraged to join groups to cheer one another on, and I’m loving being a part of the ACW NaNoWriMo group, with a lovely group of talented writers. 

I joined because my new book had just been published and I felt like I needed a bit of time out from endless editing, formatting then marketing — a time to simply write. I’d had a novel brewing in my head since a hospital stay back in January, and thought this was an ideal opportunity to see if it has wings by just going for it. And I have loved it so far — not only the writing, but the community and, curiously enough, the graph on the NaNoWriMo site, which is strangely enticing. You watch the word count grow on the graph each day as you add it to the site, and it draws you in, compelling you to keep going. Maybe we should, as writers, plot graphs of our work all year round! (Or perhaps that would, actually, get very old very quickly. I suspect so — especially in the fallow times.) 

One of the challenges I’ve found in this process is that of the noise my inner editor makes. Usually, I do write quickly but I go back and read and edit as I go along. This time I’m just splurging out thousands of words without an edit. My inner editor screeches at me at the end of each day: ‘You know that bit needs completely rewriting!’ ‘That makes no sense whatsoever.’ ‘That is so badly written you should delete the lot and start again.’ ‘You need to dig out your Emotion Thesaurus and get more show and less tell in this thing.’ All the words, accusing me as I try and leave them there without as much as one read through.

I don’t always succeed.

But, on reflection, I think it’s actually a helpful exercise for us as writers — to simply allow ourselves to fly free across the page. When we do this, we might find our characters and storylines going on some odd tangents we’d never expected, and we may also find that the process allows us to dig even deeper, so that ultimately we might be able to shape something even better (hopefully — I’ll let you know when it comes to editing stage!) In addition to this, flying free allows us to write for the delight of writing, and we all need to do that sometimes, to remind ourselves of why we want to do this thing in the first place.

I’ve been thinking about strategies for silencing that pesky inner editor, and so I’d like to share one or two here with you, and encourage you that it is okay to write without the edit, sometimes.

• Write on Scrivener or similar software: It’s somehow much easier, for me at least, to leave the read through if I’m using Scrivener rather than Word, because on Scrivener it’s divided up into each chapter and so if I do start reading through one section I’m not as tempted to keep reading — whereas on Word, it’s all too easy to never stop! 

• When you’ve finished a section, go and get a cup of tea/go for a walk/hoover the lounge: Anything to distract. It’s less likely, then, that you’ll feel you absolutely have to go back and start editing. 

• Think of the end goal: For me, one of the attractions of free-flying is that the material will be so much fresher when I come to read through and edit the whole thing, and so much easier for me to spot any issues and become less ‘word blind’ as we all do when we are going for those intense edits. 

• Silence that inner editor: When I am tempted, I like to put some worship music on instead and think about things above. That, or scream right back in I.E’s face, telling I.E that I am stronger and I Will Overcome. 

I’ve no idea where this project will lead, but I hope it will lead to a novel, at some point, maybe even a novel I will publish or get published. Who knows? But sometimes it doesn’t matter. There are folk in the group who are simply writing for writings’ sake, rather than with an end goal in mind as such, and find the intensity of NaNoWriMo helpful for getting down to it. There are people writing lots and lots of poetry. Some are working on stuff they’ve started already or refining an old manuscript. All that is good! Even if you’re not doing it this year, I’d encourage you to have a go at free-flying every now and again, to allow your inner creativity to go wild across pages at a time without agenda and without need for going back with your red pen. Write to enjoy. Write to allow the breath of God, the spirit of creation himself, to breathe through you with freedom and joy. Write for fun. Write to fly away.

And tell that inner editor where to go.

Liz Carter is an author and poet who lives with chronic illness and writes about finding peace and the treasures God brings when times are tough. She is the author of Catching Contentment and her new book, Treasure in Dark Places, is out now. She's also just brought out a short Advent devotional for those who need something bite-sized and consoling in the chaos. If you would like a free PDF of this, then just sign up to Liz's mailing list here.