So earlier I made a post about being at the 2,066 word mark and I didn’t know if I could go on. I got a couple hundred words into the next chapter and determined I didn’t want to “burn out” or “overtax” myself. Whatever that means.
It is important to me to finish a fast draft of this novella so that I can have time to edit the hell out of it. But it’s hard to let go and write crap. It really is.
But I went back to reread the lessons of Fast Draft, a workshop done by Candace Havens
What I was forced to remember was…during fast draft people write an entire 1st draft in 14 days. 20 pages a day (which comes out to 5,000 words a day, the same personal daily quota I’d set for my novella).
I figured if they could do it for 14 days, I could do it for 5. And if I couldn’t buckle down and do it for five, I had no business calling myself a writer, because writers don’t make excuses.
I mean we are talking five days of writing 5,000 words, not a 40 day juice fast. So I turned on my playlist of music, opened up my openoffice document (cause I use linux) and started typing.
July 8, 2007 at 3:42 am
Okay…I consider myself a pretty fast writer–but there is absolutely NO way I could write 20 pages a day for 14 days. Just not gonna happen for me. If I’m close to the end of a story, yeah, I do pick up the pace and I’ll have days where I put out anything from 15-23 pages–but I feel like crap when I’m done and pretty much just want to put my head down in a nice, quiet corner and sleep for a while.
Ten pages a day…that’s my usual output goal, and it really does work for me. At ten a day (and I don’t typically take weekend breaks), I can finish a novel in about six weeks.
Congrats to you, Zoe, on churning out those words and meeting your goals! And I really don’t think you should be so hard on yourself in regards to your content–when I’m first writing my draft, I often think it’s absolute crap, then I’ll go back later and get the “ah, not so bad” feeling. I think that’s just something most of us do! We never think our stories are quite good enough.
By the way, I love the new look of your blog!
July 8, 2007 at 4:29 am
Thanks! Liz suggested that I switch to wordpress because it’s a pain in the behind for some people to add comments on blogspot blogs (which I agree with.)
If I can find just the right images from a stockimage place, I might get them and make my own graphic banner for the top of the blog instead of the current image. Something a little more “me” (though the image already there is pretty.)
What I’m writing right now, I’m hoping to submit to the Samhain “On the prowl” anthology. Normally 2,500 words in a day is the normal goal when I’m working on a rough draft and this is kind of crazy but I figure I can do this for five days because I want as much of this month as I can get to polish it into something HOPEFULLY publishable.
I hate writing with that pressure, but I really wanted the opportunity to submit to Samhain and at the moment their open submissions are closed so this is a shot to get my writing in front of an editor there.
Zoe