Tags
2K to 10K 31 Plays in 31 Days 750 Words A Newbie's Guide to Publishing a room of one's own Aaron Sorkin Adam Lauver Aimee Mann Alden Jones Alexander Masters All Things Considered alphabetical order amazing Amazon Ang Lee Angels in America animation Ann Patchett Ann Voss Peterson Anne Lamott Anne R. Allen AOL Instant Messenger Apartment Therapy audio drama Austin Kleon author pages avalanche thinking baby bump Barnes & Noble basement cat Belgariad benonsensical Big Fish Bill Watterson Bird by Bird Blake Snyder blogging book porn books Books-a-Million Boston Boston Playwrights' Theatre Boston Theater Marathon Brain Pickings brainstorming Brandon Sanderson brevity Bridge Rep of Boston Buffy the Vampire Slayer BuzzFeed C.J. Redwine C.S. Lewis caffeine Calvin and Hobbes Carlo Gébler cat Catherine Lacey cats Charlie Jane Anders Cheryl Strayed Chris Baty Chuck Wendig clichés coffee collaborative writing Colson Whitehead comedy conflict copyeditor Corpse Bride Cracked.com Craig Fehrman Craig Mazin creative autobiography creative nonfiction creativity Curious George Cynthia Herron Daily Kick in the Pants Dante Alighieri David Daniel David Eddings David Farland David McRaney David Ogilvy David Rakoff day jobs Dean Wesley Smith Dear Sugar Deborah Martin delayed gratification depression description dialogue discipline divorce Dogma Dragon Age: Origins Dragonlance dreams Dungeons & Dragons East of Eden Eat Pray Love Edward Kelsey Moore Elise Capron Elmore Leonard Emerson College Emily Kaye Lazzaro endings epic Ernest Hemingway escalation ESP Esquire magazine extroverts F. Scott Fitzgerald Facebook fanfic Fangs and Clause fantasy Father's Day fear fear of the basement fellowships fiction authors Fiction500 first lines first novel flash fiction formal writing Freedom freewriting full-length plays fun. Game of Thrones Gandalf genre fiction GIgantic Sequins Go God Going Viral Google graffiti Grant Snider greeting cards Half Empty Hallmark Harper Voyager HarperCollins Harry Potter homeless people Hovey Players Hovey Summer Shorts Festival Howard Gardner Hugh Howey Hurricane Island ICanLegoThat ice cream trucks IFTTT iice cream trucks imposter syndrome Incidental Comics Independent Clause internal conflicts interviews introverts io9 Ira Glass Irish Famine italics J.A. Konrath J.K. Rowling J.R.R. Tolkien James H. Duncan James Thurber Jan Reymond Jane Vandenburgh Janice Hardy jeffjlin.com Jen Doll Joanna Penn John August John Coffee John Scalzi John Steinbeck Joss Whedon jury duty Kamala Nair Karen Russell Kevin J. Anderson Kevin Smith keyhole effect kids Kimberly Ann Southwick Kindle Singles Kristine Kathryn Rusch Kurt Vonnegut L. Ron Hubbard Lake Superior State University Le Morte d'Arthur Legos Letters of Note Letters to a Young Poet LIC One Act Festival Lifehacker.com Lilo and Stitch List of Banished Words Lists of Note literary fiction literature Llyod Alexander Lord of the Rings Luke Skywalker magical fantasy world Maine man cave manuscript factory Marc Maron Margaret Weis Mark Twain Mass Effect mass effect 3 Massacre Lane Massacre Pond Maurice Sendak Megan Stielstra microfiction Microsoft Word middle school momentum Mona Simpson money Monica Byrne monologues music musical NaNoWriMo Nathan Bransford National Novel Writing Month Native Americans Neil Gaiman Never Check E-Mail in the Morning New York Times No Plot? No Problem! nonfiction Nora Roberts note to self NPR Old Testament Olivia D'Ambrosio On Writing online resources Open Culture Oprah organization outlines outlining Outward Bound overused phrases pacing page turners pantser paper routes paradigm paradigm shift parapsychology parenthood parenting passion perfectionism Pete Docter Peter Corea picture books Piers Anthony Pixar planning playwrighting playwriting plot plotter podcast poetry pomodoro technique premonitions procrastination productivity prolific prose poem psychology publishing myths race Rachel Aaron Rachel Scheller Rainer Maria Rilke Ray Bradbury real estate rejection relationships Republic of Brown research revision reward systems Richard Feynman Robert Heinlein Romainmôtier Roni Loren rough drafts running Ryan Casey Samuel Park Save the Cat! Scarborough scheduling schizophrenia science fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America Scientology scrivener self-doubt self-publishing sequence Shadowrun Shakespeare shared sacrifice Sherwood Anderson shitty first drafts short films short plays short stories short-short stories singing single parent Sir Thomas Malory sketches smart phones smartphones Songs of Innocence and Experience soundtrack South Portland Spider-Man SPIN Magazine Starbucks steal like a writer Stephen King Stephen Marche stories submitting success! suicide Susan Sontag Tad Williams Tasslehoff Burrfoot teaching technology telekinesis ten-minute plays terribleminds thank you in advance The Atlantic Wire The Berenstain Bears The Boston Globe The Business Rusch The Chronicles of Narnia The Chronicles of Prydain The Creative Habit The Creative Penn The Divine Comedy The Formative Years The Game The Getaway Car The Girl in the Garden The Grinder The Interview The LIfe of Pi The Lighthouse The Manuscript Factory the new normal The New York Times The Old Reader The Other Side of the Story The Passive Voice The Rumpus Thelonious Monk thinking patterns This American Life Three-Minute Fiction time travel timed writing Tony Kushner Torch transcript Trinity College Tuesdays with Morrie Twitter Twyla Tharp undefined Vericon vignettes Virginia Woolf Voltron Wall Street Journal Whatever Where the WIld Things Are Wikipedia Wild William Blake William Shakespeare Winesburg Ohio Wool workaholic workflowy Working Writers world building Write or Die Writer... Interrupted writerly bedrooms writerly headspace writers writers block Writer's Digest Writer's Market writing writing early writing fast writing routines Written? Kitten! WTF Podcast You Are Not So Smart
Saturday
Jan122013

Reflections on Week Eight

[Read the completed story here!]

This one nearly broke me, folks. These past almost four months between final story and when I first posted the prompt have been a crucible of self-doubt, resolution, procrastination (i.e., poor impulse control), tentative starts, running around in circles, revelation, and finally just plain unrelenting hard work.

I've said it before, but this is the longest work of fiction I've written since grad school. And, I think, the first since maybe high school where the point of the story wasn't profound meaning and verbal pyrotechnics but just to tell a story.

So, y'know, breakthroughs a-plenty this week. Or "week."

I want to talk a little more about this revelation, though, because there was one thing in particular about Dean Wesley Smith's blog post that made the difference, and that would be Dean Wesley Smith himself.

Because I am trying to be a more active citizen of the blogoverse, I had posted the following in response to another comment where the person was worried about their writing speed:

Same here! My eyes bulged when I read that Dean averages 1,000 words per hour. I’m lucky to average 200–300, and all of those words are hard won.

What steps are you taking, Christopher? And I’d be very curious to hear if and how others have managed to boost their word count without sacrificing quality.

I was hoping for a discussion, some pointers, maybe. But pretty quickly I had a reply from Dean himself:

Hey, Brandon, what is “quality?” If you mean without sacrificing writing from the English teacher part of your brain, then you never will get faster than a few hundred words per hour. But if it means just letting fly and writing from the creative side of your brain, that all comes down to just typing speed for many of us.

To which I gleefully responded:

Hi Dean, thanks so much for taking the time to respond personally! I certainly struggle with censoring the inner editor—learning how to just let fly would definitely improve the output. Maybe it’s a matter of experience, but I find myself getting bogged down in the minutia of this fantasy world I’m writing in but haven’t fleshed out yet. (The idea was to let the rough draft direct the shape of the setting, but then there’s Is there an official town guard? What about plumbing? Clothing? Currency?)

What I’d love to know is how much planning/outlining there is before you feel free to rely solely on the creative side. When writing 1,000 words an hour, how extensive is the revision process?

Thanks again!

To which he... did not respond, because he's an incredibly busy person and, really, he already told me what I needed to know. The big revelation here was the words "typing speed." That I could actually give myself permission to write fiction at the same speed I chat or write emails blew my mind.

Between making a commitment to spend at least five hours a week putting new words to paper and this new "typing speed" approach to the first draft, the last several thousand words of Kyra's tale came pretty easily. All those questions about the world I had previously found so paralyzing were easily answered once I had built up momentum. I trusted that no mistake was so great that I couldn't fix it later. And to respond to my own comment, the revision process was not any more extensive than it was before. I was shocked to find that I liked most of what I had written, and that my many starts and stops did in fact cohere with the sprint at the end.

So that's that. In summary: it was hard work, but I am elated to have done it.

Next up, Week Nine!

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
« Week Nine: Microfiction week! | Main | Week Eight: Fantasy-ed! »