Don’t Curate While You Create
Aspiring authors like myself will face this problem again-and-again-and-again, even seasoned novelists might even fall within this trap…
The trap where you’re writing new characters, new worlds, new stories and then, perhaps after 100 words, or maybe even 500, you begin to read over what you’ve just written. And you start deleting, start re-organising, or adding new words in. We begin to curate.
But what have we really done? We’ve broken our flow, our rhythm, our creating…
The definition of curate (as a verb) reads: select, organize, and present, typically using professional or expert knowledge.
The definition of create reads: bring (something) into existence.
And here is the crux, in order to curate, words, ideas, characters, events - they need to have existed first.
In their entirety.
I can’t possibly select and choose certain parts of my character’s development plot throughout a story if the character hasn’t fully been developed. I can’t possibly select and choose what final act events I want to foreshadow at the beginning/middle of my story until I know what exactly the end is going to be.
So here is what I do, to stop myself from curating before I create:
Even if I’ve done a full outline, I list out and have in front of me as I write the key events happening over the next few (3-4) chapters, and the plot points leading up to this event. (For example, a character death)
I write the chapter first, and then edit for grammar, sentence structure, and word choice only.
I let the chapters organically role, if it takes 2 chapters for a key event to happen, then I let it be. Let it breath so to speak.
I rinse and repeat until I’ve finished the story.
Only then do I start “curating”.
Writing my novel length stories this way has allowed me to get a good word flow and rhythm with the plot as I push (or the characters push) the story along.
But, word of warning… Even if you are doing the above, and find yourself curating as you create, what you may need to consider is a bit of an attitude shift rather than forcing yourself to write. And that comes down to letting the first draft suck. As a writer, I read a lot of books, and have to remind myself, as I’m creating, not to compare my writing to a final book that has not only been redrafted probably five to seven times, but also professionally edited.
What you create for the first time will never read the same as what you read from other writers and authors that publish their work - and that’s ok. Let it be. Let it breath. Keep going. Don’t stop writing, even to curate.
Just keep going.
xo A.R.Willow
