When words fail
I have days where I spend more time deleting what I’ve written than writing. It may be pure, unadulterated crap but it is my crap and I’m allowed to mess with it. At least I’m writing. The best advice I ever got was ‘write every day, no matter how poor the writing is, at the very least, you are exercising that part of your brain.’
Poor writing, sort of what I’m doing here tonight. It has been one of those days. Nevertheless, I am writing—a good thing. Am I writing well? That’s another question.
Tim Esaias says to keep moving forward don’t stop until you hit the end. I wish he were sitting on my shoulder at times if only to slap me in the head when I go back and re-read things. I have a devil of a friend who constantly sends me back over what I’ve written. I re-read chapters I shouldn’t. All of which leads to deleting words, sentences, dialogue, and sometimes scenes.
That’s when words fail. They fail to mesh, they fail to make sense, and they fail to move forward. I need to stop re-reading.
Posted on April 11, 2010, in My blog, Writer, Writing and tagged Author, Beads, Bones, books, Books on writing, Bull Terriers, Care giving, Caregiver, Craft of writing, Dead, Disability, Doggoned, Family, Fiction, Home, Life, Love, MS, Multiple Sclerosis, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Novel writing, Writer, Writing. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Doggonedmysteries 
That’s where critiquers come in handy. We can read and reread what you shouldn’t reread and let you know how it flows. But you know this already, lol.
For what it’s worth. By the time I started writing regularly I had been painting for many years. Something painting taught me worked well for knowing when to reread.
You can’t “correct” a color until there are many colors around it to check it against. I used the same idea for knowing when it would be useful to reread my writing. If I hadn’t moved on a good bit from where I was tempted to reread, I’d leave it alone until I had written a lot more.