August 29th, 2022 – 1,433

~ Sam Shuttleworth

Sometimes I just spot typos in older titles and I have to worry. Like I just saw the August 21st entry is listed as being written in 2023. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s wrong…? It’s not really a problem but it does feel, weird, going back and editing earlier entries. I try to reserve that only for catastrophic errors – like the wrong date – and when I need to just wipe my hands of something bad enough that it warrants it. I have only ever done that once. This is my compromise that I’m noting that long enough after the fact that it would be hard to spot now, but is still part of the record.

So I am halfway through chapter 23 of TEL and I have already scrolled to the heading and added a comment to say ‘just cut this in the rewrite’. It’s a bit grim, but I was talking in my journal today about the two types of bad chapters I end up having, though I think now I reflect on it there are three:

  • No, that didn’t happen.
  • It did happen, but not like this/this is so awful I just want another crack at it from scratch. (Most common)
  • We don’t need to see this.

I pride myself on the fact that third one is rarer for me, as I do write quite tight stories that flow from beat to beat, but that’s what today’s was. I realised I skipped a scene to jump to a needless if emotional one, and instead I’m gonna airlift the good stuff out of this relic, and then go back and write the earlier chapter instead. But here’s the interesting part: I am going to finish the chapter tomorrow that I am cutting. See, it all happens, we just don’t need to see it, and while you might think ‘why bother then’, it’s actually quite useful to the flow of the story. It means I can jump back, write the missing chapter, and then when I’m done, I write what happens following on from the chapter I am now going to cut. If you’re like me and you prefer to write linearly, I recommend this process. I’ve done it a few times and it makes it so much easier to stay in the flow of the story.

Only other thing of note is I bought 7 packs of pancakes and they’re all rancid. That kinda sucks.

Published by Sam Shuttleworth

I’m Sam, and I live to write. I spent most of the first 8 years of my adulthood trying to balance writing with a large amount of crap in my personal life, until towards the end of 2018 I threw everything out and started afresh with just my writing. I built the new me around one goal: I have to write at least 1,000 words a day. I called this goal 1K, and it changed my life. So long as I write a thousand words a day, the day is a success, and atop that I've managed over time to build the life I wanted all those years. My greatest flaws as a writer is I still use too many adjectives, adverbs, connectives as openers, accidental passive voice and I don't force my work down people's throats enough on pain of extreme and unusual torture. My greatest strength is I know my greatest flaws and I'm working on them.