What’s The Easiest And Hardest Part Of The Creative Process?

What’s the easiest part of the creative process?

Nothing.

Making time to write. I may be in the minority here, but that’s because I don’t do a lot of other things. I don’t watch movies. I don’t play video games. So on and so forth.

I’m also stubborn, so I will fight anyone or anything that gets between me and my writing time.

With editing, the final round is much easier than the first.

I love having time to write and edit. So I try to give myself plenty of it.

What’s the hardest part of the creative process?

Everything.

For me, getting through the middle is the hardest.

Beginnings are fun and exciting. I love the honeymoon phase of any project.

But overcoming the halfway hump has been my biggest obstacle. If I can grind out the middle, the ending isn’t too bad.

I’m really bad at finishing stories. Like shockingly bad. Over the years, I’ve gotten worse rather than better. My patience is practically nonexistent nowadays.

When it comes to edits, starting is tough.

Hence why I have many written but unedited drafts.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to push myself through these hurdles.

I suppose nothing really comes easy. Words don’t write or edit themselves unfortunately.

How To Silence Your Inner Editor

There are times you need to write, which means you somehow have to silence your inner editor. Unfortunately, that’s a lot easier said than done.

Below is all my bad advice on how to silence him or her.

Tell your editor to shut up. Put your foot down.

Ask nicely. If being mean doesn’t work, try being polite?

Don’t do anything. Sometimes not forcing the issue is the best thing you can do.

Embrace the obnoxious editor. Befriend him or her.

Ignore. Hopefully they can take a hint. Or at least learn to.

Blast music. Turn the volume up. Careful you don’t shatter your ear drums in the process.

Listen. Maybe your head is trying to tell you something. After you hear yourself out, maybe your inner editor will finally stop bothering you. One can hope.

Lock them in a cage and throw the key away. Or just imagine doing so.

Practice. Just keep writing.

Never write another word in your life. Non-writers don’t have to deal with annoying inner editors, right? It doesn’t seem like such a bad life.

My Editing Process

I’ve edited essays until my eyes hurt, so I figured I’d break down my process to better understand how I operate. For those moments I don’t remember what to do when faced with a terrible first draft.

I tend to start from the beginning and work my way to the end. It seems the most logical to me.

I’m not sure where I’d even begin if I didn’t start with the first sentence. That being said, reading backwards is a good strategy to catch spelling mistakes.

When I’m on the computer, I make content changes. This involves cutting, rewriting, as well as moving ideas around. It’s just easier to copy and paste on a computer than on a phone.

I make edits to the content first before I get to the mechanics or the smaller but still significant details like grammar. Once I’m happy with the placement of each sentence, I move on to making everything sound better.

I almost always take a break to get away from my slightly-improved-but-still-needs-plenty-of-improvement essays. I think about anything else in the world not related to editing.

I come back with a fresher pair of eyes and a re-energized mind.

Then I do technical edits on my phone. It’s convenient because I bring my device with me everywhere I go, so I can access my essays all the time.

I play with words until I find the perfect one. Two seconds later, I resign myself to the fact that perfection is impossible. Again, I work in a chronological fashion.

I know I’m done when I try to change something but end up liking the original better. I came up with a new title once, but I ultimately went with the old one.

Editing is a time-consuming process. There aren’t any corners you can cut. Just do your best. Who knows, you may even surprise yourself when all is said and done.

My Problem With Peer And Self Review

Let me start by saying I love one and hate the other. Care to hazard a guess?

In high school, I hated peer review sessions. Who doesn’t jump with joy at exchanging work with classmates and giving feedback for improvement?

I didn’t get a lot of helpful or useful comments from others. People tossed my essay back and told me it was perfect. I fumed inside because I knew my first draft was not even close to perfection. Imagine a world where first drafts were great.

I almost always came out of peer review workshops feeling a bit frustrated. OK, a lot.

Even though I tried my best to give constructive criticism, some people didn’t reciprocate. I don’t blame them. More than any other institution, I feel like in high school people are at a completely different level on their journey. Don’t get me started with teenage maturity.

To be fair, editing is hard. Giving feedback isn’t a walk in the park. But I guess what bothered me the most was the people who didn’t take it seriously. I can picture fourteen year old me making comments and suggestions while everyone else around me talked about whatever high schoolers talk about. I grew up fast.

Obviously, the more I edit other people’s work, the better I am at reviewing my own work. That said, I can’t look at my writing the same way someone else can. Still, I should charge a premium anytime someone asks me for feedback.

I’ve never given much thought as to what I think about when editing my own work.

I care about consistency and clarity whenever I’m critiquing. I also love brevity as much as the best blog reader. Wordiness will likely be the death of me.

Ever since I’ve learned about parallel structure, I’m careful around lists. This ties in with consistency to an extent. If you have two verbs in your list, I don’t want to see a noun phrase at the end of it. That’s guaranteed to drive me crazy.

Shout out to all the writers who have amazing flow. I aspire to write like you. Because I never outline, my first drafts are a hot mess.

Surprise, I’m such a stickler for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Sometimes the small details make the biggest difference. But I like rule breakers within reason. I’m one myself. Tough to get around not doing things by the book in academia though.

Writing Advice & Editing Advice

Writing Advice

Start writing.

Pick up your pen and put it to paper. Form letters into words. String words into sentences. Turn sentences into paragraphs.

Don’t stop. Keep going.

First drafts aren’t perfect. They never will be. Stop trying to make them perfect. Focus on getting your idea(s) down somewhere. Write first, edit later.

Try to separate writing from editing. They’re two different processes.

Learn how to silence your inner critic. Listen when necessary.

Be present. Take life one word at a time, one day at a time.

Break big projects into smaller tasks. Make deadlines. Meet them.

Focus on the process of creating. Have fun and enjoy yourself.

Find your inner voice. Nurture it.

Give yourself enough time to write as much as you can, whenever you can.

Remember you’re closer to your goals than you know. Don’t give up now or ever.

When you want to stop, push yourself to write a little more. Make this a habit. Challenge what you know you can do to see what you’re really capable of.

Balance writing with everything as best as you can. Take small and big breaks.

Write for yourself and no one else.

Editing Advice

Put some space between writing the first draft and editing it. Give yourself time to edit.

Change the font or colour of the text.

Print out your work when possible. Then read your writing aloud.

Be honest with yourself. Learn what you’re good at. Learn what you aren’t so good at. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Play up the former; play down the latter.

Critique your own writing as a reader would.

Make many revisions. Make even more.

Even if you love a certain phrase or scene, don’t forget to delete what you don’t need. Your story is better off without redundancies.

Edit slowly. Go at your own pace. Apply corrections. Learn from them. Attempt not to make the same mistakes again. Focus on a different aspect of writing with each round of editing.

Fact check. Double check. Make sure you’re correct.

Be better than your excuses. It’s better to edit too much than not edit at all.

A first draft shouldn’t be your final one.

Writing, Editing, And Watching Baseball

I love writing. But editing is not nearly as fun as baseballing. It’s happening. I’m making up words. If only I could be the next Shakespeare.

I spent the day writing and editing.

I spent the night watching baseball instead of working because procrastination is so much easier than being productive.

When I first started writing this post, I was trying to think of parallels between editing and baseball. I’m sure there are some, but my tired brain can’t think of one.

After writing most of an essay earlier in the day, my brain was ready to shut down. In a perfect world, I would have a lot more time to write and edit all my essays.

I don’t enjoy trying to write an entire paper in one session, which is why I prefer not to procrastinate until the last minute. More often than not, I give myself enough time. After all, I know myself as a writer better than anyone.

It helps that I write every day. I know what I’m capable of, I know how long I need. So I can plan out my mess of a life accordingly.

Editing is tricky though. Again, in a perfect world, I’d have all the hours I want for revisions. Some papers take longer, especially if I wrote an extremely terrible first draft. Besides, the more words I’ve written, the more time it’ll take to make them better.

I know this isn’t the best idea, but occasionally I write and edit while watching baseball. When possible I mostly reserve such moments for shallow work such as typing up text messages or informal emails.

But I’m neither flawless, nor am I a saint.

I still haven’t thought of a parallel between editing and baseball. So much for that idea.

Whenever I need to edit, I want to write. Vice versa holds true too. Sadly, I want to do what I’m not doing.

Anyhow, I can’t wait to have a productive day tomorrow. I need to. Those papers won’t write or edit themselves.

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A note from real time Herminia:

Obviously, I wrote this post and many others while there was still baseball on TV. But I realized that some of the sentiments I wrote a while ago are still relevant today. I figured now is as good of a time as any to publish this blast from the not so distant past. Fear not, more will come. I’m horribly behind with blogging and horrible at catching up. Thanks for understanding.

Why Editing Is Hard Work

Even though I love writing, I don’t know if I love editing.

It’s messy. It’s hard work. And that’s why I’m a hardcore procrastinator anytime I have to make my first drafts better.

I tend to leave comments telling other bloggers their poem or post is well-written. Maybe what I really ought to say is they’re well-edited. After all, first drafts are ugly. How do you make them beautiful? You clean them. Fix the mistakes, the errors.

How time-consuming, huh? I’d argue that sometimes it takes more time to edit than it does to write. At least in my experience.

I don’t know if I’d call myself a perfectionist, but I am quite particular with words. I’m constantly looking for a better one.

With writing, I try not to worry about being perfect. I focus as much as I can on getting my thoughts or ideas down. Dump the contents on my mind onto the page.

I’ve gotten better at separating writing from editing. They’re two separate processes. They’re tough enough to do on their own. So imagine trying to write and edit at the same time.

I procrastinate editing for obvious reasons. It’s a lot of work, especially if I know I wrote an exceptionally terrible first draft.

I think editing requires more energy than writing. Maybe energy isn’t the right word. Editing asks more, demands more. You need to be alert and attentive rather than divide your attention or try to multi-task.

I like writing later in the day when I’m tired. In the mornings, I feel more awake, less exhausted, so I’ll edit. Besides, I catch mistakes better when my eyes aren’t threatening to close on me.

Just like writing, editing in my opinion is toughest at the start, usually right before you begin. But the more you edit, the better your piece will be. And the closer you’ll get to being done with editing and moving back into the magical phase of writing.

Do you find editing hard? If so, why?

The Experience Of Giving And Receiving Feedback

My brain melted. I spent an evening reading two stories and trying to critique them, constructively of course.

I’ve forgotten how much work giving feedback is, especially to people you hardly know.

I keep going back and forth between I’m being too harsh or honest. Besides, I would want people to be truthful by providing useful suggestions, not tell me my piece is perfect, which everyone did in elementary and high school.

I like to think I have a good grasp of grammar, so I can’t help myself when I see a comma splice or a dangling modifier. But I also realize grammar isn’t always the main issue. Writers want and need feedback on style, flow, etc.

Editing is a lot of work. It’s one thing to edit your own story. It’s a whole other beast entirely when you have to critique someone else’s.

I try to give feedback I’d like to receive. So I do what I can to balance content suggestions with grammatical corrections.

Ideally, I could sit down with someone and talk to them face to face about their work. But when does that ever happen?

On the other side, getting feedback is great but still a challenge.

I hate my ego sometimes for getting in the way.

I don’t always apply every comment. At times, I am dismissive or defensive.

It helps to get an outside perspective on your writing. And I think having strangers critique your story has its advantages. They don’t know you like your family and friends do. Most of the time, they don’t have to go out of their way to protect your feelings.

But I’m careful with my comments. I include question marks following my suggestions. I say maybe and perhaps so many times, it’s not even funny. I tend to add a disclaimer at the beginning or end, saying something along the lines of take what works, toss what doesn’t. If anything is unclear, ask me to clarify.

I guess I’m well aware my ego is big but fragile, yet I don’t want to hurt anyone else’s because I’ve been on both sides of the proverbial coin.