Gagging the Harpy Yapping Over My Shoulder . . .

There’s a harpy always yapping over my shoulder.  No, it’s not an interfering relative or friend–it’s my Inner Editor.  She slows my writing down and leaves me feeling inadequate, both in word count and skill.  You see, I tend to edit everything to death, and my IE goes right along with that.

“You could be more descriptive . . .”

“Passive voice!”

“Is that the word you were planning to use? Merriam Webster called . . . they want their Thesaurus back.”

“You repeated the same word three times close together!”

You get the picture.

So I’ve decided to circumvent the harpy by signing up for NaNoWriMo.  Attempting to pen fifty thousand words in thirty days sounded insane to me–it still does–but it also seems like a good way to delve into my creative space and rise above that cantankerous harpy inner editor.

I’m planning to work on The Path of Thorns, the sequel to my first novel.  It will be a conglomeration of words that need to be polished and prettied, edited and re-edited, and my local liquor store will likely be sold out of Zinfandel and Moscato wine, but I hope to rise above . . . that voice.  Maybe we’ll learn to compromise in the future.  Anything is possible, right?