Friday, August 14, 2015
Labels:
writing
I'm Not A Good Writer
When I write a rough
draft of anything, it is a complete mess. Usually, I can barely stand to read
my rough drafts because they are so amateur. Going from my brain to the paper,
my writing is full of unnecessary and forgotten words, awkwardness, ugly descriptions,
and things that simply make no sense.
I have a boss who is
dyslexic, and he's always asking me to help him with spelling stuff. Well,
because my spelling is bad too, I'm no help at all. It's probably worse than
his, and I don't have a learning disability. He so would not believe me if I
told him I was a writer. How can someone as horrible as me be a writer?
It's scary, but
while writing pages and pages in this awful way, I rarely look back to fix
stuff. In the back of my mind, I know what I'm writing is for the garbage, but
that's okay. I only need to get the story out of my head. If I'm really into
the story, it's okay if my writing is
way less than perfect. It's okay.
So yes, I am a
horrible writer. What I am is a good editor. Now that I think about it, it may
not even be fair to say specifically that I'm a good editor because I like
showing my work to different people to get feedback. It's probably more
accurate to say that I'm good at the editing process. I know what to keep, and
I'm not afraid of throwing stuff out.
Even before I
started sharing what I write publicly, anything I wrote that I considered
done was edited about five times. First I revise, making the story says what I
want. I make sure the events are in the right order, the story has the right
tone, and that the plot is tight. I do that twice. Afterwards, I hit the grammar, and it's two
rounds of that. Then at the end, I do
one more overall edit. I have edited more times, but that's the typical
process.
Although I do get
frustrated with how rough my rough drafts are, I'm kind of proud of owning up
to being a bad writer. I rarely get
writer's block because I'm not paralyzed by attempting to write perfectly. I
know getting things perfect the first time around is impossible for me. When I
write, I write directly without stopping.
There is no reason
to stop if I'm writing my thoughts, and I'm not too concerned with how things
are turning out.
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I really appreciate this article. I myself am having trouble writing my rough draft because it's just, well . . . rough. I have the bad habit of wanting to reread what I've just written and then when it sounds horrible, I get into this frenzy, agonizing over the thought that the novel is a piece of crap. You're article has helped me to realize that I'm not alone, and that first drafts are supposed to be ugly. :) I think from now on I'm going to set a rule for myself to not reread my story until my first draft is done and over with. I'm also with you on the spelling part of it. Sometimes I find it so hard to articulate the right words out loud, and telling people I'm a writer is embarrassing because I don't sound like I could be capable of writing.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you found this helpful. ^_^ I think not seriously editing my first draft is what makes it possible for me to finish most of what I start on. If I didn't, I would be trying to finish the same story forever. I hope you continue to make progress on your novel. If you still love the story, don't give up on it!
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