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FF Sparks (Casual)

[Writing] Annoyance...

There's nothing more annoying than finishing a chapter of your story, getting another 1000 words or so into the next chapter, and then realizing you need to redo the earlier chapter in order to have things flow well. I hate breaking the flow of my work -- I've written a total of 8375 words on the story since Thursday afternoon -- but I can already see that if I continue on this path, I'll have to go back and rework about four chapters afterwards. So I'm throwing out part of this chapter and tomorrow, instead of working on the chapter after it, I'm going to redo the latter half and then continue on. Hopefully I can get more words in!

That said, I have a question for other writer-sorts out there. I've discovered that I cannot, CANNOT write on the computer. I mean, I can, but I fall into the trap of re-reading the sentence I just wrote, and going back to edit it, and eventually I hit a point of stasis where I endlessly edit and never move further. I can't even write in pencil, because I have the same problem. So I take a notebook and a full fountain pen, and I walk out to the waterfront; I sit in a little niche there below Gasworks Park and write, then I come home and type up what I've done. When I'm writing in ink, I can't go into endless edit mode because, well, I'm writing in ink.

This is actually why I'm worried about this chapter. Originally I had thought I would just forge ahead, but no, I've come to the realization that I know it needs to go the other way, and I can't make the following chapters flow -- I'll have to rewrite them all if I do -- without changing this one. But I worry that this will be a bad habit to get into. Maybe if I do it just this once it will be okay, though, and I won't start editing instead of writing; I need to (after this) stick to just writing straight through, as far as I can.


I do the same thing, really... I type a paragraph, then can't help but go back and start editing and editing and editing. I do try writing out a whole chapter in pen first if I can. It doesn't always work this way, though.