Last week, I started a new practice. I’m trying to further separate writing and editing into two unique processes. Writing is a right brain activity. Editing is a left brain activity. A quiz on Facebook told me I’m evenly right and left-brained. It must be true then, right? That means I can do both writing and editing. Just not both at once.

I read this advice when I was preparing for NaNoWriMo. They told me I should just write and not try to assess as I went. I did that. But now I’m challenging myself to go further.

You know those squiggly red lines under words that are misspelled? Well, those drive me crazy. And when I’m typing fast, I make a lot of typos. The first time I typed ‘I’m’ in the sentence above, I typed the I and then a space before the ‘m. I could have let it go and then fixed it when I proofread, but that’s just not comfortable. In fact, it makes me crazy.

When I told my sister (a former English teacher) about my plan, she agreed. She said she used to make her high schoolers type with the monitor covered. Yeah, not gonna happen here!

But the good news to me is I’m getting better at letting the typos slip away as I write. Most times, I wait to correct them until my first read through. Unless, of course, I’m afraid I won’t be able to make out what word I actually meant.

It’s really my typing teacher’s fault. She insisted we look strictly at our copy and not at the keyboard, never at the keyboard. Yep, it’s her fault. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Thank you for following the journey! I welcome feedback and suggestions.

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