Writing

I haven't written something really long (over 500 to 1000 words) for several years now. I've sort of wondered why and maybe you have too.

However, for me, writing is sort of like falling in love, only when you write something there is quite a commitment of time to it much like if you have a love affair with someone before you get married. I might say that losing parents and friends along the way is sort of difficult to bear (lost my best friend from age 6 on in 2006), my mother in 2008 and my best high school friend from junior High and High School around the time I stopped writing longer stuff.

I remember I was preparing to go to his funeral which was to be a military funeral because he was in the Air Force in the Viet Nam War repairing jet engine in large planes and fighter jets back then. He had been losing it mentally but his wife also wasn't doing well so she basically killed him (by accident). I tried to save him but since he hadn't been classified non compes mentes legally there was nothing really I could do to save him. I remember the day of his funeral in Bakersfield near his sister's waiting for the military funeral my son and my wife were in the next room and I couldn't speak at all I was so upset about what had happened. Maybe this shock hasn't worn off yet. Maybe that's why I can't seem to fall in love with an idea I want to take a week or more to write about day and night.

I don't know. Anyway, if you are a writer, maybe you know about falling in love with an idea and developing a story. Or if you are a precognitive psychic like me you just might write about the past or future anywhere in the universe. Either way, falling in love with an idea you want to write about is a lot like having an affair before you marry. It's great fun! But also there are times when it is difficult too. It's just like life.

Then afterwards, the story is sort of like your new baby that you love and have to take care of. In some way that's the hardest part, not to ruin it with the wrong kind of editing. You see, without heart your writing means nothing. So, the worst thing you can do is to ruin it with editing that is too harsh.

This is why I hate editing so.

So, what I would recommend is "Don't ever throw away your 1st draft". Because if you do you might regret what you do to it editing it and have no place to go back to. Also, label your 1st draft what it is because you might have 20 drafts and then how are you going to know? So, keep and label your first draft so you have a place to go back to if you screw up your works editing them.