Help me duct tape my internal editor's mouth shut!!

I prefer external editors. You can put it on ignore, let the answering machine pick up, pretend not to hear it calling your name, and go to the movies when you told it you'd be home.

I don't have an internal one, I had that surgically removed years ago.

Who's the boss. Until you figure this out, you'll continue on the current path.

IE

Carrie in PA said:

How do you deal with your internal editor?

Click to expand...

I listen to him. I don't allow him to boss me around, but I'd hate to shut him up. He's the one who makes sure I'm getting it right.

Best advice I've ever heard (or used) to shut the internal editor up is to not just give yourself a word limit or a time limit every day, but to do BOTH. Making yourself sit down and write 2,000 words in one hour...that'd shut anybody up.

Then, after that first hour is up, let the editor out of his cage and let him go to town on what you've just written.

Ha! I have that same problem, Westly, and it drives me crazy!

The only thing I can think of to do is kind of what you describe: I don't let myself read what I've already written until I've reached my pre-determined word count, or time limit ... then the editor goes rabid, it can't be helped, only put off for a short while. (Ultimately a loosing battle for me, as I am an editor.)

Anyone else have any advice?

Get him drunk.

Kidding . . .

As near as I've been able to determine, the only cure for an out of control inner editor is time, experience and confidence.

The mantra I was taught by the head of a fairly successful workshop was: write, write, write, edit, edit, edit, submit, submit, submit. In that order. When you get something back, you turn around and resub it immediately. I can tell you from first hand experience that this formula works. I didn't think of myself as a writer until I started doing this. Rejections put hair on your chest . Acceptances give you confidence.

This teacher suggested writing with your monitor off if you have to. I can't do that (I'm very visual and need the cue of seeing the words appear on the page), but I did find that writing flash fiction helped enormously. Sixty minutes of straight writing--a thousand words. Take a prompt and just go. This is tons of fun and one of the things you learn to do is trust your right brain for the story and puts you in authority over the left brain (the editor, if you prefer that term).

If you get good at it, you can even find a market for the stuff.

I give mine a highlighter and only allow a small yellow tick where I might want to reconsider. Then I say, you see? I'm not ignoring you!

Carrie in PA said:

It's driving me crazy! I'm trying to get the story out, but that darn internal editor keeps harrassing me: "Fix this beginning!" "Move that section!" "Page six HAS to go!" "Review your tenses!" "Sweep the hearth! Shine my shoes! You can't go to the ball!" Whoops, that was more evil stepmother, wasn't it?

How do you deal with your internal editor?

Click to expand...

Hmm... my internal editor won't be quiet, so I let it be noisy. But I also don't let the editor interfere with what I'm writing, unless it's very insistent, in which case I listen.

Generally, I make 'editing notes' as I write, .e.g., "sentence needs tightening", or "this really should go later; move there", or "gods no, this is terrible; scrap it, it doesn't fit, but keep for something else". And so on.

The editor's satisfied and I get to write.

This is also handy for second drafts. I don't have to go hunting for the major problem spots. (^_^)

Earthshoes: the only thing a gal likes more than hair on her chest is 1000 free range words! I like the monitor-off idea.

Of course, what I suspect it really, truely does boil down to is confidence. Spelling, grammar, sentence-tightening ... that can all be changed, by someone else if necessary. Good ideas? Fresh, inspired metaphores? Insight? Something to say? That can only spring from the source, and if it doesn't... no amount of internal nagging is going to change it.