Never Edit Angry
It’s not often that I blog writing advice, because everyone has their process and what works for one author might backfire for another. However, this advice I’m about to give you I believe with my whole heart:
Never edit angry.
Or perhaps it’s better said, “Never edit depressed.” Unhappy, anxious, sad, angry—these are not good emotional states from which to try and analyze your work. Anger makes us impulsive and depression zaps self-confidence. Either one is bound to lead you to make poor choices in what you cut or add to your manuscript. If you’re like me you can forget what was good about your story in the first place.
Case in point——Fire and Rain 5, aka Rick’s story. I’ve been working on this on and off for almost two years, but I took it on as a project for real this January. Writing went fine until I got clocked with the worst depression I’ve ever had in my life.
A combination a traumatic personal events and having been switched to a completely ineffective antidepressant and… Man, I was a mess. There were days I couldn’t leave my house, or my neighborhood. Heck, even my bed. My whole family suffered. One of the worst aspects of this, though, was how badly depression led me to sabotaged my own writing.
I’d breeze through 20 thousand words in a few days, only to tear it to shreds in revisions until their was nothing left of the story but bloody bits. Halfway through drafting, I’d forget what my point was, and stare into space for hours. With Rick, I wrote a first draft full of passion and emotion. Then, in revisions, I whittled it down to a bland, thready husk.
Finally, I gave up.
Realizing I’d never get traction until I got some distance, I opted to write something totally different. Young adult. Under a different name.
See—Daisy Harris might have been a shattered woman, but my YA-writing self was hopeful and chipper. After all, who says dissociation and compartmentalization* are negative coping mechanisms?! Sometimes, when you have a lot to cope with, compartmentalization is the only thing helping a girl get through the day.
I spent the better part of summer and fall writing a kick-ass young adult novel in which I faced my every writing demon. (First person! Strong Villain! No sex! Full length!). Having done that, I was ready to face the revisions I needed to make Rick shine.
The only problem is, I’m working from a later draft of Rick, one where I’d nailed down my plot, but I’d removed large sections of backstory and emotion. Every time I think I’m done, I realize there is a section that WAS there, but that I deleted in a wild-eyed fit of self-flagellation.
Sure, I saved previous versions, but it’s this never ending slog to find the pieces of text I need amidst piles of manuscripts all labeled something useless. I really should have started revising not with the most recent version I had, but with my first draft, before I’d chopped the thing to pieces.
My whole writing career, I’ve been a slash-and-burn reviser. I’m fearless in cutting and always willing to re-think a manuscript. For years, I could trust my gut and never look back.
The problem is, some things destroy judgment. Depression, PMS, post-traumatic stress disorder, even just being really pissed off—-all of these make it so the world you’re seeing isn’t necessarily the real one.
So, yeah. Don’t edit upset. Don’t edit angry, or sad or anxious. Believe me, you’ll be happy you waited until you were in a better mood!
Hope this is useful to some of you writer-types. And for those of you fans who stuck with me through the trials of this year—THANKS. Your emails and tweets and kind words meant more to me than I can say. 
Cheers,
Daisy
*For those of you who weren’t psych majors—Dissociation is the ability of the mind to separate and compartmentalize thoughts, memories, and emotions. This can range from something as mild as daydreaming to more serious detachment from emotional or physical experience—aka, what people think of as out of body experience or dissociative personality disorder. We’re writers, though. A little multiple personality disorder is par for the course.
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