Write Now

Writing is a joy for me.  I love to put the words together on a screen and see how they develop into a part of my life.  To that end, I decided to write every day.

And that seems to be the recipe for NOT writing.

You see, being the rebellious spirit that I am, I balk at someone telling me I HAVE to do something...even if that person is ME.

We won't go into the intricate details of just how demented that makes me and on exactly how many levels my crazy makes itself known.

Suffice it to say that when I want to write, I do.  When I don't want to write and I do it anyway because, you know, it's a RULE...

I got nuthin'.

Or it might be better to say that I got less than nuthin'.  The stuff I got wasn't worth putting on the screen, much less on paper.

My questions are these:  How do I sustain the writing days?  How do I actually write enough to make myself happy without editing it to death?  How do I just LET IT FLOW, ALREADY???

When I write for the church it doesn't seem to be a problem.  I'll write it, edit it, and then start cutting for word count.  It's when I get into the fiction part that I can't seem to get away from myself.  I write, add more ideas, then find myself reworking sentences, wording things differently, refining thoughts.  I worry about rambling on, getting too detailed about characters, not getting detailed enough about characters, story line, grammar, punctuation...all the things that should be left to the editing process instead of the writing process.

I actually think it's a way to avoid writing more than anything else.

For instance, when I write here it just comes out.  Free-flowing thoughts, no internal editor.  When I write fiction, I rethink every word I type.

It is frustrating, to say the least.

I need your ideas.  Help me to get over this hump, please???