One of the reasons that I'm not getting very far very fast on my current project is that I keep going back to reread and revise what I've written so far.
I keep trying to resist the temptation to look back, but I can't help myself. I've been turning different scenes or character descriptions or other details over and over in my head, so I feel the need to go back and sharpen things. Thus far, it's proven to be an unproductive strategy and it hasn't made me feel any better about what I've written.
I need to stop looking back and keep pushing forward or else the story is never going to be done. Although, at this point, the story has barely started -- all the more reason to keep making progress.
With the first book that I finished, I didn't go back and reread until I was 150 pages or so in. I wanted to make sure that I was keeping the story and characters consistent as I wrote. But this time around, the story is more complicated and I keep tweaking details that set up the storyline later in the book. But that should be what revisions are for, I suppose, fixing the mistakes I made in the beginning.
Still, I can't help feeling that I'm just stalling, because the story isn't going anywhere good. Even so, the only way to find out is to keep writing and see how far I can get. I'll have to resist the temptation to keep going back to the beginning until I get to the end.
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