Writing Tip: Make Little Attempt to Edit While Writing

Best-selling author Bo Sanchez said it best in one interview, “I write liberally, I edit conservatively.” This should be the code all writers live by. Writing liberally means not caring about the rhetoric or grammar, rather, writing as if no one is holding you back except the ink on your pen and the fire in your heart.

The idea is to make your first focus the flow of the story and the advancement of plot. Don’t worry if the story is going too fast or too slow. Don’t worry if you see a plot hole the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Just get the words in there and worry about it later.

This process is called freeform writing- the act of putting into paper anything and everything that comes to your mind. Some of the most interesting things come from this process and usually, our natural tendency for telling stories comes out from it.

The red-winged boy jumped up to the top of the mountain. He looked down upon the burning village. He smiled maniacally and shouted “Revenge is served!” repeatedly.

…and so on and so forth.

But your work doesn’t end there. When you’re finished, you need to go back to your writing and weed out the bad sentences and fill in the plot holes. This is what it means to edit conservatively: meticulously going through what you have written over and over until it is perfect. This is the extreme opposite of what you did earlier. This time, you have to scrutinize everything.

Are the words spelled right? Are there any grammar mistakes you forgot to clean up? Are your words appropriate for your target audience? Can you do anything to make the story a little more effective?

The red-winged boy flew to the top of the mountain and looked down upon the burning village- his village. He smiled villainously and whispered: “Revenge is served.”

Do it in the old-fashioned but tried and tested way: Write freely, edit meticulously.