To Edit While Writing or Not: That is the Question!
A major point of the Zero Draft approach to writing is to move forward. Just keep pounding out pages from FADE IN to FADE OUT. For some writers, that comes more easily than others. In this latter camp, those who like to edit as they go.
This issue has come up several times during the Zero Draft Thirty Challenge, so I wrote up a response for the Facebook group:
If you are the kind of writer who can HONESTLY say, “I am committed to getting to FADE OUT even if I choose to edit as I go,” then there’s nothing wrong with that. Frankly, that’s what I’m doing, but that’s how I write anyhow, I go over and over and over and over pages. But I’ve written nearly 50 scripts in my life, so I’m confident — based on experience — that I’ll finish this draft.
Each writer has to face this questions square on and take into account their relative degree of experience and confidence. If there’s ANY DOUBT about editing, that it COULD slow you down, then my advice: Don’t edit. Just keep pounding out pages. There will ALWAYS be time to edit. But in a 30 day challenge like this one, it is a zero sum game.
There are literally 720 hours in November. If 1 hour editing translates into 1 or more hours LESS Zero Draft writing, you can really put yourself up against it.
Again remember the point of the Zero Draft: Get the damn thing done! FADE IN to FADE OUT. The word “edit” is nowhere to be found in those edicts.
But again, every writer is different. And if NOT editing is “killing” you in such a way that it’s stifling your creativity, you may want to explore allowing yourself some time each day to edit.
Just be aware that can open a can of worms. Now you want to change something in the setup… which means you’re rewriting those pages… which means it will impact pages you’ve already written beyond this point… and suddenly you’ve lost a day or two to rewriting.
So on the whole, I would REALLY encourage you to stay the course. I quoted Anna Hamilton Phelan (Gorillas in the Mist) elsewhere today, I’ll quote it again:
“If I could say anything, it’s keep going. Don’t go back and fix that scene, that dialogue. Just write the next word.”
Just. Write. The. Next. Word.
For a Zero Draft, there is perhaps no better advice than that.
I’m not saying it’s a RULE not to edit. There are no rules. If you’re the kind of writers who absolutely must edit as you go along, fine.
But let me share a story. Back when I first got married, my wife Rebecca was in her junior year at the University of California, Berkeley. I remember going in to check on her when she was writing papers.
Scott: How you doing, honey?
Rebecca: Good. I’m on page 8.
Two hours later I’d pop my head in.
Scott: How’s it going now?
Rebecca: Uh, I’m on page 5.
She would edit. And edit. And edit some more. Writing up to the last minute. Her papers were brilliant (she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and got accepted into the UCLA Political Science doctoral program), but it seemed like she spent as much time working backward as forward.
Hey, whatever works.
But if you are committed to doing whatever you can to get to FADE OUT and you can resist the temptation to edit while you write, going back over pages when you can be going forward…
That’s probably the best tack to take.
How about you: Edit or don’t edit?
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