So how the heck are you going to sustain this writing experience for the entire month? Do you have your good running shoes on for nightly sprints or are you just sticking with your thongs and shuffling along at your own pace?
I find that having someone else to account to for my writing goals helps me focus on actually achieving my daily target. There are times though when I really wish I could stick somebodies whip somewhere the sun doesn't shine. This normally happens when I'm behind in my writing, or when I worry too much over what is happening in my story line.
Chris Baty from NanoWriMo suggests that you shouldn't worry about spelling or whether something sucks right as you're writing it. You can always edit later. But the main thing to do is get the story down on paper/screen as soon as you can.
I tend to try to edit as I go
, but last year I put this to the side and just wrote my fingers off. 50,000 words in 9 days. I just sprinted as fast as I could and didn't freak out about whether or not someone was sounding like a cardboard cut out ordering cornflakes in my dialogue. The words got down on screen. On the first edit I took out 15,000 words and wrote 20,000 more. That manuscript has been requested by New York agents and Australian ones. I'm still working on it, but it showed me that I could just write, sprint in fact and have the words flow faster than I could get them down.Don't worry if you think the story sucks, just get it written. As the adage says "You can't work with a blank page."
See you at the sprinting track!
2 comments:
Nat, I have to remind myself that a you can't edit a blank page - although sometimes I truly tink a blank page would be written better, lol.
I think everyone feels this way Anita, we all think that one day we're going to be found out as frauds, that someone will call our bluff and prove we're not writers. Until then let's plug away at the keyboard and see what comes up. LOL
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