Actually, getting up early in the morning to write has been a godsend for me. I think that, despite many years vociferous denial, I may have to admit that I am against all odds a morning person. Even in non-writing contexts, if I can motivate myself to get out of bed at all I get way more done between 6:00 AM and noon than between noon and 6:00 PM. That’s why I always try to eat lunch as late as possible at work; I seem to work less after lunch and the day drags on.
Posted in Drafting
Tagged humiliation, inner editor, overwriting, perfectionism, status update, whining
Believe it or not, I didn’t before today. I was kind of wanting to slack off a bit on my drafting, and I realized that, hey, I don’t know exactly how my story is going to end. I knew that it was going to involve some Solar-System-shattering political changes, but I didn’t know any specifics. Now, I know that it will involve a few more specific things:
Happy Thanksgiving, my America readers! I don’t know about you, but I am lately stuffed with turkey, ham, and carbohydrates of various sorts. It’s a good day for the ol’ red, white, and blue.
With the business surrounding the holiday and some relatives from out of town showing up, I haven’t exactly kept up the ol’ Wrimo pace, but I’m starting up again. Despite the holiday this weekend I’m planning on writing around 15K words from today until then. I’m about 4K in so far and going strong.
Let’s do some more talking about discovery writing for a few moments, shall we?
Posted in Drafting
Tagged characters, discovery writing, drafting, fix it in the rewrite, novelling, overwriting, story structure, viewpoint
As we head into the third week and the second half of NaNoWriMo, I’m going pretty strong. In fact, I’m doing better right now than I have at any of the previous years at this point. Usually I’m floating a day or two at most over part (25,005 words today), but now I’m almost a week ahead (I’m at 36,002 right now). And this is with two zero-word days last week, and one with less than a thousand words. I’m willing to call this a triumph. Continue reading
Posted in Drafting
Tagged fix it in the rewrite, inner editor, nanowrimo, overwriting, perfectionism, story structure, viewpoint, writing
I just broke the 20K word barrier, and I’m rocketing onward toward the halfway point of NaNoWriMo. As far as the greater drafting project is concerned, this puts me at way less than 25%. I’m definitely in this for the long haul, and it’s starting to hit me exactly how long a haul it’s going to be.
Not that I’m getting discouraged. I’ve been having days of writing 3000 to 4000 words, and I definitely won’t need to keep this up until the end; even 2000 a day will have me finishing in less than ten weeks. And of course there’s a chance that I’ll just end up finishing the story without having met my word count target, which is fine. Great, even. I’d rather not over-write and have to cut a bunch of stuff later.
It’s actually occurring to me that I’m doing exactly that. I have long paragraphs of description because they’re so easy to write and I have no time for sentences that do more with less. That’s incredibly counter-productive as a NaNo-er and, furthermore, as a discovery writer. But this year more than any other, I have to keep consciously reminding myself, “Fix it in the rewrite.”
I’ve also been having a great time at the social events this year. Last night’s write-in at McMenamins was great fun, if noisy and crowded – something like 12 people showed up at one point or another. That’s about 10 more than I expected, and I was really pleased to see a few people that I hadn’t communicated with since the kickoff party. Definitely looking forward to the next write-in. It was going to be tomorrow, but I’m not going to make it for reasons that I’ll cover in the next post.
If you’re a Wrimo, now’s the time to write 100 more words! I know I’m going to. If you’re not, then rest easy knowing that the novels of the future are on their way.
Posted in Drafting
Tagged fix it in the rewrite, inner editor, nanowrimo, overwriting, status update, write-ins
