Does it have something to do with their brains? Yes! The reason is that the brain works much harder since it uses a complicated mechanism to keep the two processes separate.
So how does a writer, stop the editing gremlin from stealing imagination? Here's a suggestion I've adapted from Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within...Think of freewriting as a time when you are fancy free and your hair is flying in the breeze as you sail with your ideas. The Editor's Hat will stop the fun of cool, breezes in your hair. Don't let yourself don that hat and spoil your creativity too soon! Tell yourself after you've enjoyed a lovely ride, you'll have plenty of time to comb out your best ideas and wear the hat.
Once your best ideas fill your paper and you run out of fuel, go ahead and put on the Editor's Hat. Put on a literal hat. This helps you separate the processes in your brain. Pretend you are editing for a large magazine... You want the article to hook readers and hold interest. And, at the same time a top quality article informs and stirs folks to question their current ideas. If you edit with this in mind, as well as watching grammar and formatting, while you wear your Editor's Hat, you'll squelch past problems of losing your creative focus.Amazingly, your brain focuses best on one thing at a time! Spend too much time trying to juggle more than one objective and you'll end up wanting to get rid of all your goals. Ellen Weber suggests that a creator cannot be a critic at the same time.
How do you keep the editing gremlin at bay while you're creating copy for an ad or other writing projects? We can all learn from your strategies!
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