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“Should I edit as I write?”
“Should I really write a crummy first draft? It feels so raw and uncomfortable.”
“I keep finding myself wordsmithing and then I get so little writing done. Is that okay?”
There is a difference between writing and editing.
The short answer is that everyone finds what works for them, and you’ll need to experiment and see what works for you.
Generally, I do encourage emerging authors to write a rough first draft and edit later. There’s a freedom and power to getting it all down and then working with the raw material. However, not always. Here are my…
You’re writing a book proposal. Write a rough first draft of your sample chapter(s). Then, rather than writing the whole book, focus on polishing those one or two chapters for the proposal. Your agent or publisher may have changes to the book, so it will save you time not to write the whole thing in case there are dramatic changes in the book concept.
If none of the three above apply, try writing rough drafts and keep moving. It will give you such momentum and freedom to get it down in draft form and later go back to perfect.
If you are editing, you may enjoy this post with 7 Quick Writing Tips, and this post with additional editing tips for tightening your writing.
[…] has weasel words and other tips, Nathan Bransford tells us how to edit our novels, Lisa Tener asks: should I edit as I write?, and Kristen Lamb warns of the dangers of premature […]