Write without Fear. Edit without Mercy.

 

Today I will be doing a post about writing and editing.

I cannot imagine a life without writing even though I only got the interest of writing at the age of eleven, I have no idea how I survived without it before then. Writing is, to put it in simple terms, my past present and future. Initially it was considered as a hobby for me. To come up with ideas and play the parts of characters that I know I will never have the courage to be in real life. It was just another past time, just like reading or baking. But soon it became apparent that I didn’t want to just write as a hobby but I wanted to have a career as a writer.

It wasn’t a common profession and according to many people I know being a writer is only worth if you are quite well known. I didn’t believe in that though. I think that there is more to being a writer than just writing books and getting money through it. It is about telling the stories of those without a voice. For me writing is also a chance for me to play with my imagination. Although reading does the same to me, with writing I have more control so I can make the characters do whatever I want with them. However I outgrew that phase of being controlling and making my characters make decisions and act out scenes that I would expect myself to do. Instead I started creating personalities of their own and I like to think that each of my characters have their own unique style. Yes maybe some bits and pieces of them are drawn from me or those close to me but I try my best to make sure that they are their own people.

People think writing is just a bunch of words on paper telling a story. Yes that maybe true but to me and I think other writers out there it’s much much more. It is quite tough if you actually see to keep creating new characters and making sure that they are all not the same and to keep creating situations and seeing how your character reacts to it is just the same as adding different indicators and solutions to one particular solution to see how it reacts!

Writing the first draft is quite easy unless you are a person that needs everything to be perfect and orderly. I am that person who doesn’t mind how her first draft is as long as the main plot line hasn’t been changed. Take ‘Over Spilt Nescafe’ for example. If you have read the book on wattpad you’d understand that it is only a first draft and not much editing has been done. And you can see how many changes I will have to make when I am editing it, which I am currently doing.

Editing a novel is nothing like writing it. When you are writing you just let your creative juices flow and you have no need to restrain it but with editing it’s a whole different situation! You have to make sure that you are willing to give up scenes or characters that do not make sense in the book which I kind of have a hard time with because hey I spent all my time creating that beautiful character with their own cool personality and I have to give up on that! Heck no. which is why now I have a separate book in which I write all my characters that have been given up and deleted scenes from my books. This way I have a few new things that I can tweak just a bit to fit into a whole new story.

Editing is pretty hard since you have consider a lot of things, like the country and its culture. The people, the timeline and a whole lot of other stuff. I am currently editing ‘Over Spilt Nescafe’ and my gosh the struggle I am going through because there these scenes that are just plain unrealistic and there is Natalie, the main protagonist, is just blabbering nonsense. I am in such a fix as to decide whether to keep those scenes or not. I do want to keep them because it tells much about her personality. The imaginative kind with a whole load of exaggeration but at the same time I am wondering will people even bother/like to read it?

Overall I so think that when writing you just let it all out and leave the hard bit of editing and scrapping out and polishing later because if you try to edit while you write you are probably going to end up with one big gunk of a book and you have no idea what is where. Believe me I’ve tried and lets just say it didn’t really end that well.

Take care bears

Till next time

=)❤Sammy