Editing and Writer's Block

Somewhere in all the posts flying around my online writers' groups (or elsewhere. I've read a lot lately), someone said the best thing - or maybe it was the hardest thing - in a first draft is to turn off the internal editor and put words on paper. I know this. Lesson One for an Experienced Writer.

TT: Lesson One for an Inexperienced Writer is "not everything you write is gold." See the problems we writers face? No wonder we talk to invisible people.

The other bit, though, was the light going off. Editing is reserved for writer's block.

Nice.

I shut my inner editor up by telling her I'll edit later. I'll need to. I reread a bit from a week ago, and even I have no idea what I was trying to say. It's bad when I can't read my own handwriting, so to speak.

Applying this rule, along with "make something happen when you're bored," work has resumed on Price of Justice.  We all know how much I hate word counts, but I'm spending time every day moving the story forward an inch at a time. If I can produce 300 words a day, I'll be done with the first draft in June.

Oh, how I wish that "if" didn't loom so large in my mind.

No matter. I'll keep writing, 10 words a day if that's all I can get out, until it's done. I won't worry about reader expectations, alternate endings, or arbitrary deadlines. Writing used to be fun. It will be again.