Writing tricks

[icepixie]

Finally, I have figured out a way to make myself write!

As probably happens to many of you, I frequently sit down at my computer with the best of intentions. I open up Word, I crank up something I can write to in iTunes, I flex my fingers, I place them on the keyboard...and promptly go haring off to Firefox to surf the interwebs for hours, because actually writing? Aahahahaha, don't make me laugh!

So I pretty much stole the Pomodoro Technique, which is mildly popular at work. I started by setting a timer for thirty minutes and giving myself a goal of 250 words by the time the timer went off. Then I toggled Apple's full-screen button in my Word window (similar to Scrivener in that it blocks out everything but the document, including time/date/menus up at the top). Then I stared at the screen until blood came out of my forehead until the timer went off. Eventually I got bored enough with staring at a half-written fic that I started writing just for something to do. Lo and behold, I managed more than 250 words by the time the timer went off.

Admittedly, I do cheat now and again because I'm a frequent thesaurus user and sometime I just need that synonym for "glance" or "annoyed" or whatever RIGHT NOW, but it does seem to be circumventing the worst of the avoidance methods. At any rate, in the past week I've added a couple thousand words to the not!drawerfic, bringing the total up to 27,000 words. It feels, oh, maybe a third done. I hope. I feel like it's been going on for a while, but actually it's only taken me three months write 5,000 words shy of what took me A YEAR when I was working on my space pilots. (I'm still going to go back to it! Once I've gotten this one out of my system! Which, if I can proceed at the same pace, should be by the end of the year, oh I hope I hope...)

*

In other fandom news, I...well, I don't really have any. I finished watching The Americans a while ago, and while it was enjoyable, I just don't have anything to say about it. Sometimes that happens, I guess. I'll probably watch the second season when it comes out.

Orphan Black is still on my to-watch list, but I think I'm going to save it for the long weekend over July 4th. And at some point, rowdycamels and I are going to get back on the stick in regards to nx_rewatch. We're so close to the end! Just distracted by other things lately...

Comments

[jae]

27,000 words--that's awesome! Go go go!

-J

[icepixie]

Thanks! (Of course, now I just deleted half a scene and haven't yet written myself back up to 27,000, but oh well...)

[jae]

I'm at 21702 words now myself at last count (and since mine is much shorter than yours, this is the homestretch--yay!).

-J

[icepixie]

Go you! Until last year, I always had trouble reaching even 5,000, and I felt like 20,000 was a height I'd never reach. I'm still impressed by anyone who can write anything longer than a vignette, basically.

I'm looking forward to the home stretch of mine. My timeline goes from 1990 to 1997 (although I'm seriously thinking about cutting things off at 1995 and writing a much shorter sequel rather than trying to pack it all into one), and I'm currently toiling away in...April of 1990. *facepalm*

Granted, I do write out of order, so I have about 6,000 words along the continuum of late 1990-1997, but even so. At least I'm almost the point where I can summarize months at a stretch with just a couple of sentences in between important events.

[jae]

I write out of order too! How funny--most of my writerly friends think that is SO weird. Tomorrow I'm planning on working on the last scene (which takes place in 1968) and the second-last one (which takes place in 1960).

And yes, summarizing narrative interludes are sometimes a good technique, aren't they...

-J

[icepixie]

I'm always slightly incredulous that anyone can write in order. They don't have that scene from near the end they're just burning to write, keep coming up with events/images/sentences for in their head that will be GONE if they don't write them down right now? I'm not even much of a planner when I write--I only break out the bullet points for novels, and even then I mostly plan by writing some garbled notes further down in the same Word doc as the story--but I can't think of something over, say, 3,000 words I've written where I didn't have part of the ending or middle written before I got through the beginning. I have to have something to write toward, I think.

[jae]

The people who I've talked to about this don't think in terms of scenes at all, first of all, and they also don't know what happens until they get there.

I can't imagine that for myself at all. Like, at all. My stuff would be so chaotic if I tried to write that way, and the narrative would be a real mess. But there are writers who do produce good stories that way.

-J