Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Your Past Has Been Edited - Create Your Future Instead

I had a bit of an epiphany today. As a writer one of the things I hear a lot is to keep the editing of your work to a minimum until the writing is complete, at which point you can go back and fix things. Then, you definitely edit but watch yourself so you don't get stuck in editing. If you do you'll end up in a vicious circle where you write, edit, write, edit, write, edit, write, edit, and your book never gets published. The point here is to be okay if the writing isn't perfect. Somebody will always find flaws anyway, regardless of how perfect you make it. So do the best you can and get your work published, don't get stuck in the mire of perfection!

Now the reason I wanted to share this was because I realized that this piece of advice translates quite well if you put it in the perspective of life. How often do we sit and dwell on the past, wishing we had done this differently or that differently, or said this and not said that. Or we look back fondly on the life we once had and look with misery on the life we have now.

I realized that when we do this, what we are doing is simply editing and editing and editing. We're editing our entire lives in some strange effort to change the outcome. We know we can't change it but we keep looking back wishing we could. So maybe we should stop editing and start writing the new chapter of our lives. We live in the present and we can create the future with our dreams, words, visions, whatever you want to call them.

Now is the time to live in the present and create the future - it's time to stop editing the past.