Wearing the editor’s hat can be difficult when I am too close to what I have written. If I just wrote it yesterday, getting that writer’s hat off my head is going to be more difficult. Lately, I have been enjoying pulling old manuscripts out of the drawer and editing them. It’s kind of like collaborating with myself to edit a manuscript I wrote two, five, ten years ago. And putting on the editor’s hat is easier because those phrases and words aren’t quite as “deathless” (like they ever really are!) to me. I can cut and change and move around what's on the page without feeling so attached to it.
Often even when when I am writing for the first time, I feel like I am collaborating with myself. I am thinking and writing the story, but my misbehaving mind is suggesting other ways for it to go and the characters sometimes take over…and sometimes on the edge of sleep my subconscious supplies other suggestions. Those all go into creating. Then comes the editing which is sometimes a group effort too.