Carolyn Creative

Okay, I’ve made it to 18, 000 in my attempt at National Novel Writing Month!  Hip, hip, hooray!  Not that any of those words are particularly good ones, or work well together.  And yet I type away.

It’s week two.  Naturally, some of the initial excitement/fervor has worn off.  However, I’ve noticed other changes.  I am more immersed in the world of my characters.  Some of them have appeared in my dreams, or I hear snatches of dialogue and think about my characters.  I also notice things around me to include in my novel.  Like sounds, trees, weather, light, and cars.  I’ve always been somewhat doofusy about cars; it recently occurred to me that my characters need some way of getting around.  Well, one of them has a bike.  But that probably won’t work for everyone.

The hardest challenge so far has been the idea of turning off your Inner Editor.  When writing a first draft, we are encouraged to forge ahead — just do it! — instead of returning to previously written sections and change things.  Like, making sure a character has the same name on page 3 as he does on page two.  Or making sure a sentence has a subject AND a verb.

This is tough, but I like the idea of turning off your inner editor.  If we could apply this to life off the keyboard, it might be helpful as well!  Think of how confident we might be if we could switch off any negative dialogue in our head.  Of course an inner editor comes in handy if you are prone to oversharing at a cocktail party.  But often our inner editors hold us back from trying something new.  Would life be lovely if we let ourselves be first drafts now and then — sloppy, creative, and inspired?