Image thread 25

[classicdrogn]

That is the iconic failure mode of not separating your editing time from writing time - the mindsets are very different, just like additive modeling by squishing on soft clay, painting, or welding metal/gluing plastic/etc. is different from whittling a block of wood, machining a metal blank, or carving stone. Worse, one tends to get in the way of the other and leave you productive at neither.

When you're writing, just write - don't worry about typos, or thinkos, or naming that new character, or the perfect description, or fight choreography, or alternate phrasing, even alternate scenes, just spew it all onto the page or screen or whatever and keep going, and if you get a better idea for how to word something a few minutes later give yourself a few extra lines to set it off, record that, and still keep going. Editing time is when you make that mad whirlwind-tossed stormwrack of creativity make sense, fix your SPAG, hit the name generator, search Wikipedia to see if your memory of thus and such was accurate, decide if or how much to change if not, etc.

Also save any fragments you excise in a notes file. They may fit in somewhere else later or inspire something that does, and in the worst case you can read through it in a few years and pat yourself on the back for being smart enough to have cut that drek out of it.