The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 3 July 2009

Writers' Digest, October 2004, pages 26 to 33, has a collection of short "nuggets of wisdom" related to getting published. Maria Schneider is the author of the compilation. Take a deep breath, and here we go:

"Whenever I'm blocked, I lower my standards. Wait, let me correct that: I abandon my standards completely. I urge myself to write badly and once I do that my fingers begin to fly and the inner critic is powerless. I used to keep a motto taped to my typewriter: leave the judging 'til later." Christopher Scanlon

Postpone the judging -- we shall judge no writing before it's time? Give yourself an opportunity to be wrong, because you can fix that, but you can't be right unless you're writing? So just dump it. I was reading somewhere recently where a writer blogged about his first draft being a vomit version. Rather disgusting, but memorable. Just get it out there. Then you can fix it.

I'm not sure that we want to urge ourselves to write badly, but we definitely need to put off the inner critic. Tape his mouth shut, blindfold him, and put him in the other room. Now, write it. Let the words flow, the images out, don't worry about little shifts in point of view and what not, just get it down.

Grammar, criticism, spelling, punctuation, revision -- that's for later. You have to start somewhere, and getting the words down is where the writing hits the page. So do it!