The Evil Inner Editor

The Inner Editor is quasi-evil when writing a first draft. Don't get me wrong. He ensures I avoid fragments and run-ons. He proofs my basic grammar. He spell checks for me, although MS Word does it too, just not as well as the evil inner editor. These are all good things.

But he's always poking at me while I write, making me feel bad.

"That sentence makes me angry. When I get angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, people die!" "

"Your protagonist's dialog is insolent. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds."

"How dare you use an adverb there. I demand the sum of ... one million dollars."

"That scene. Throw me a friggin' bone here."

In short, the dude slows me down. And yes, he's a dude. He's a bald dude with a bald cat and a miniature clone living in an underwater lair.

I very well know it's fine to write crap, at least in the first draft. But will the Evil Inner Editor let me? How do I turn him off? Why can't he just have a look at the first draft once its written, and then give me one cohesive critique? I'll tell you why. The Evil Inner Editor doesn't work that way.

He's an omnipresent, mojo-draining taskmaster that needs to be locked away in a space ship in geosynchronous orbit around the moon until I'm ready for him. Until then, I'll agonize over each paragraph, sentence and word. I need to stop that. I need to stop him. Sometimes, I'll have the mojo flowing. The story finds its way from my head to my fingers, and the word count shoots up. I need to bottle that. That's the genie that keeps the Evil Inner Editor at bay.

I'm going to start paying careful attention when the words rush out. What am I doing to keep the Evil Inner Editor out of my head so that the story can flow freely? Once I get that figured out, I'm going to try it on purpose, and see if it's repeatable. I'll blog about the results in a few weeks.