This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 528 episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors

Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode, Seven Steps to Stop Overthinking your writing.

It's a question I've received countless times from readers over the years,

and one I found myself asking of late as well,

how do you stop overthinking your writing? Writers are often known as

thinkers. Indeed, we're often proud of the connotation. We spend a lot of time in our heads. We love to read, we research like we love it because we do, and we know a lot, though usually not quite as much as we think we do. However, thinking and writing, especially creative writing such as

storytelling, can sometimes seem strangely out of balance. As much as writers may

identify as thinkers,

we usually prefer the actual act of writing

to be less about thinking and more about flowing.

Now what we're talking about here is thinking in the sense of active and logical thinking.

Naturally we are thinking when the words are flowing, but in those moments it often

seems less that we are thinking the thoughts and more that the thoughts are thinking us.

When we take too much control, it ceases to work that way.

And that's a problem because the more a writer learns about how to write and how stories work,

the more conscious our thinking becomes.

And sometimes this reaches the crisis where writing becomes a lot of work simply because we are doing all the work.

We're the ones doing all the thinking rather than just being the conduit and letting

the thoughts think us.

Susan Geiger recently messaged me on Patreon

about this all too common conundrum.

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