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Fanen Chiahemen's avatar

Love this. We're not meant to get it right the first time. If you find yourself hesitating, trying to write something “perfect” before it’s even real, pause, then let yourself write it badly. You can only edit something once it exists.

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Robert M. Ford's avatar

Wow, Jeanette!

You're making this Brit sound like an American, all of a sudden. There was so much good stuff in your post. So much wisdom.

I finished writing my first novel around Christmas time, and while I'd been happy how it had been fitting together, scene by scene, and then chapter by chapter, I was devastated to find that it was pretty ugly in parts - overwritten, cliched, meandering. I was tempted to abandon it for a while, to write it off as a failed project, and then I decided to give myself to celebrate all that I'd done right, and all of the potential that is glistening under the surface.

I've tried following The Artist's Way a couple of times over the years, but where I froze was in committing my words to paper, as if I was chiseling them into one of Moses' tablets. Rather than decide the process just wasn't for me, I've accepted that I just love the cut-and-pasteability of using a word processor, and far fewer trees are sacrificed in the process.

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