For whatever reason, I'm pretty adverse to editing. In fact, I'm so adverse to editing that my default is to edit as I write. The second sentence is not written until the first is perfected. I do not swoop. I am the Ur-masher.
For the last several years, I've been experimenting with not doing that. In terms of total words written versus time spent staring at a blank screen or page, it's been a roaring success. But at the end of the day I'm still adverse to editing, so it's pretty much guaranteed that once I've hit save or put the pen down I'll never open the file or notebook again.
So this week, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I have been trying to make myself do just that. The stuff I've written is, largely, in better shape than I would have insisted it was had I not actually bothered to look at it again. Which raises the question, Why was I discouraged by it as I was writing it?
And woah. There is way more of it than I thought. Some of it is finished, but at the time I did not deem it worth posting. Yesterday I said, What the heck? and started to post it anyway. Some of it I remember writing, but can no longer remember how I planned to end the story. It'll be interesting to see if any of that ever comes back to me now that I'm thinking about it again. Some of it I have no memory of having written at all. This last one is pretty disorienting. Like, This came out of my head? Really? But there it is on the page, so, yes it did.
Some of this stuff is already over 10,000 words long. Some of it is 20 years old. I really like the idea of cleaning up as much of it as I can and posting it, even if it's now canon divergent or possibly an eternal WIP. Because, you know, I wrote it, and that's kind of cool.
これで以上です。