Thursday, September 3, 2015

Okay at writing but terrible at editing

I think most writers that love to write might be like me in this. I love to write but hate to edit and you can see this if you observe my writing.

No matter how much you love to write if you want to get paid for writing you likely will have to learn to edit much better than I do. However, I can pretty much write about whatever I like because money isn't my problem and I'm retired mostly. So, I can write about whatever I feel like.

But, writing often is sort of like having a baby in a way. Dad's have babies too and often their lives really change with pregnancy and birth of a child. And you have to be really grown up to be present for not only the birth but through changing diapers and staying up with a sick baby and stuff like this. I can remember once with my now ex-wife when all 4 of us were sick with the same flu at the same time. This was pretty awful with one bathroom at the time even though we had two bedrooms in the house we rented then.

So, there is a great deal of commitment required to writing and then editing almost anything. For example, if you read "Memories" you wouldn't know it but likely I spent literally hundreds of hours trying to edit "Memories" which you likely will think is funny if you read it. After doing that I sort of gave up on editing beyond spell checking something when I wrote it and sometimes I don't even do that unless I come back and read what I have written or compiled.

So, writing (if you are going to sell your writings) is one part inspiration and 5 parts editing (or more).

And I hate editing which is why I'm really glad I don't get paid for writing because then writing might be a love-hate relationship (and we know how those often turn out).

So, if you read some of the longer stuff I have written like "Memories" just realize that literally hundreds of hours went into editing "Memories" to it's present form. And if I wanted it to be perfect I would have to put in about 900 hours of editing more. So, I gave up and left it the way it was for now.

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