Giving Myself Permission To Write

This blog post from Writer Unboxed couldn't have come at a better time.

"I rode on the write-edit-write-edit carousel, which meant a year later I was still plotting out my story while editing at the same time. This might work for some, but it stalled my progress. I was caught in an endless loop that meant I wrote at a snail’s pace.
In order to write that fast I had to learn to get the story, and only the story, down. When I hit a patch that my internal snail frothed to focus on, I made a note and kept going. It was freeing.
The drafts of my story became easier to write when I could assign their purpose. First draft: get my crazy ideas on paper; second and third drafts: edit and refine."

I have been stuck in this endless "write-edit-write-edit" loop as well for the past few months, and it took this blog post dumping a bucket of icy water over my head to jolt me out of it.

Why can't I give myself permission to write?

I know my characters aren't developed enough yet, and I know there are plot holes. But I think that at the moment it's more important for me to finish an entire first draft than it is to get the existing parts closer to per***t.

Tonight, I'm giving myself permission to write the next scene in TGITP (not to continue rewriting one of the scenes from the beginning). To hold myself to this promise, I'll update soon with how it went.