Write Drunk: Edit Sober

Write Drunk: Edit Sober ~ Ernest Hemingway

This is one of my favorite quotes. The writer in me agrees wholeheartedly. The realist in me says, get real...you can't be drunk all the time! True, but that doesn't mean I don't want a glass of wine every now and then to help me get started!

In just a short few days, I will be participating in a writing challenge called NanoWrimo. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, it's a novel-writing challenge where you write 50,000 words in 30 days. You choose a genre and get cracking. They have smaller support communities in different cities, all striving to simply write. They even have these 15-minute challenges where you write to see how many words you can in the short time frame. Sounds like fun, right (write!)?

Well, here's my problem. I've been sober for too long. As an editor, I have honed a special craft of rewriting and rewording almost everything that comes across my inbox and into my magazine. So when I sit down to write, I'm stuck. I keep rewriting sentences and searching for words that don't materialize. I have lost the ability to tap into my creative mind and just write. So when my cousin suggested I try this, I thought "what do I have to lose?"

I'm still not sure what I'm going to write about. I've decided to write in the romance genre because, well, why not? And since deciding this, the phrase "engorged member" has become a running joke around the dinner table at my Aunt's house. But I don't care, the point is to just write, relax your mind and write. Thank goodness I use a computer instead of a pen and paper...I can destroy the evidence afterwards! But at the end I hope I can say I've started drinking the proverbial wine and leave the editing until later.