New WIP
I have started a new WIP, and am trying something new with it. Which isn’t working, LOL. I wanted to just write, forget the internal editor and go for it. Ten to twenty pages a day. I managed the ten pages a day, but the internal editor isn’t all that keen to take a holiday.
I’ll see what I can do about it. I want to forge ahead with this one, and re-reading and editing obviously will slow me down. But quite often I think I neatly avoid painting myself into a corner further down the track with my edits, so maybe that’s just how I work.
I won’t just give up on the new method, though. I’m going to try give it a fair go.
Have you ever tried something new with your writing?
May 12th, 2009 at 11:52 am
I’m so tempted to do that, but I have in the past and know that I write a better book when I go slower. So that’s my new method — writing slower. I get the feeling it won’t be the next big craze.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Timely post, Michelle!
I’m writing in first person for the first time, and that initially slowed me down somewhat. I think my new method will be 2 drafts for a while, since I always called the second one “revisions.” Gotta love it! I’ve learned much this time around, though, and it’s always a great day when that happens.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:50 am
LOLOL, Edie. Slow but steady wins the race, and all that
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May 13th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Go, LaD!
Good luck with your first person story. I started a first person story once, but it didn’t work for me. I’ve started another one, but that’s just a quick few pages to keep my mind working on the plot for the future. It was fun, though.
May 13th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Nope. Going back and editing before starting something new works for me and I ain’t gonna mess with what works.
I think I come out with a cleaner first draft when I use this method and it puts my brain on tract for the next portion of the story.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I think I’m even slower than those who edit as they go. Like many of y’all, I edit between every session of creating draft, but before I do a cycle of writing and editing, I also “pre”-write. Basically, I describe every scene from an omniscient movie director’s point of view — who’s standing where, what everyone’s thinking, what happens, what it all means, yadda, yadda, yadda — before I write one word of draft.
It’s a horribly slow way to do things. Those “movie director” notes don’t contain much usable copy, either. I did the math at one point and figured out my ratio of words written to words actually used was something like four to one at best. It can be as bad as ten to one.
The new thing I’m trying now is writing the story backwards. I know where I want to end up, and I’m working in reverse order from that. Heh. I guess I could make my process even slower if I started writing physically backwards, as well!
May 17th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Liz, there is so much to what you say, but I find I sometimes use that going back time to tweak and give myself an excuse not to move forward. I’m struggling not to go back to my old ways with this WIP, though. My old process seems ingrained
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May 17th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Oh my gosh. Okay, Lynne, you take the organizational prize. Wow. I sometimes think I should start at the end, as well. I have jumped ahead to scenes before, but never done anything chronologically backwards. Let me know how it works for you.