One of my favorite quotes from Nora Roberts is "You can fix a bad page. You can't fix a blank one."
I remind myself this every time I think I'm not giving enough emotion or conflict or something to the pages of my work in progress. Not everyday will the perfect words manifest from my fingertips to the page. On those days, when I feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing...or that I have the reading world fooled. That I SUCK! I say wait, Catherine...you can go back and fix a bad page. I can go back and add a missing scene.
If you've visited my blog before you know my #1 advice to all writers is to WRITE. It doesn't matter if it's a bad day, good day, the muse took a vacation... writers need to make a habit out of writing to get the job done.
I'm working through my first round of edits on a book I have a deadline on...and last night I went to bed thinking that I needed to fix a few things...things that just weren't singing for me mid book. This morning I went in, read where I thought there was a problem, and 'boom' I knew exactly what it was missing.
So I went in and fixed a bad page. I did that because I forced myself to write the day the original scene was written. But I didn't let the 'need for more' stop me from writing.
Writer's Block is something that keeps a writer from getting to the next page because they know something isn't right with the one they're on. But if a writer forces something, anything, down on the page they push past the problem and then can go back in and fix it.
You can fix a bad page!
2 comments:
I agree. Even writing poorly is better than not writing at all. So what we do after initially writing, is edit. LOL
Eliza
This is so true. I often have to force myself to keep writing just to move on. Often when I come back to it later, the words aren't as bad as I thought they were. Either way, fixing them is easier than getting them on the page was.
Post a Comment