I thought today I'd give an update on how my new "write the fucking sentence" approach is going. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back and read Sage Wisdom.
When I first approached the idea it was with the expectation that it would take a few weeks to see results. As I mentioned in the earlier post, I've written at the same sluggish pace for over a decade. (I won't say how far past a decade. A girl has to have some secrets.) A habit that long standing should be a difficult one to break. However, I wasn't going to let that deter me because even if I failed, I wouldn't be writing any slower than before.
Guess what? I saw immediate results. On my first try I wrote an additional hundred words per hour. PER HOUR!
So, how did I do it? If I noticed that I had spent more than a minute mulling over how to word a sentence, I replayed Lee's wise words in my mind, and wrote the sentence. I know. It was all so simple I wanted to bang my head against the wall. If the nearest wall wasn't rough stucco, I would have. (Seriously, have you ever banged your head against stucco? It freaking hurts!) When I looked at the numbers after that first session I felt like such an idiot for crippling myself with indecision for so long. Yet at the same time, I was so happy to be past the block that it didn't matter.
Some of you might be saying that it was just one experience and that it might not last. Well, I've followed this philosophy during every writing session for the last two weeks and I've seen the same results. Heck, last Friday I wrote 1K in a little over three hours! It used to take me all day to get that kind of word count. This new pace has opened up all sorts of possibilities for me. I can write more in a year, I can actually do some housework (a weird thing to be excited for, but there you have it), and I can take time off for a con or two and not feel guilty. But this new freedom isn't the best part. What astounded me the most was that the words I threw on the page, weren't that bad. They were actually better than I had expected to see when I first considered this. Who knew?
So with absolutely no regret, I can say that from now on, that sound bite of Lee will be echoing in my mind while I write from here on out.
Showing posts with label Lee Moyer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lee Moyer. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Sage wisdom
Last month I had one of those "I hate this story it sucks" moment. It's not the first and I doubt it'll be the last. This one was particularly significant because of what happened a couple days later.
I was chatting with Lee Moyer after an event and as usual I received some unexpected advice. If you haven't met Lee, I should explain that not only is he an amazing artist, he's one of the sweetest men on the planet. He also has a habit of giving out unexpected advice and the occasional psycho-analysis to those he cares about. No really, he does and it's not annoying at all. He's says it so sweetly that it's impossible to be offended (which is good because what he says would be hard to hear under other circumstances). On this particular night his advice concerned the real reason as to why I hated my story.
I was being stupid.
That's not what he said per se, but that was his point. Lee explained to me that many artists, regardless of medium, reach a point about halfway to three-quarters through a project where they hate everything about it. They hate the flaws, they hate how much time it's taking to complete, they hate the concept...and when that happens, you have two choices.
1) You can give up.
2) You can press on and finish the project.
Obviously, option two is the right choice because no one wants to buy an unfinished project. So how does a frustrated writer get out of this mess? This was Lee's answer:
"Write the fucking sentence."
I have to admit, this made me laugh. He was so sweet when he said it, it was hard not to. (Did I mention that he's a sweetie?) I was also a little sad that I'm not a romance writer. If I was than I could take his advice literally.
But all levity aside, he's right (as usual). I needed to get over myself and "write the fucking sentence". I was wasting too much time and energy grousing about what the story wasn't when I could have been using that time and energy to make it what I wanted. The "if you polish a turd, it's still a turd" mentality wasn't going to get me anywhere and (as Lee also pointed out) may be crippling me. During the course of our conversation I mentioned that I felt pressured to write as perfect a first draft as possible. I know, that's a ridiculous expectation, but I only have a few hours a day in which to write and I've never been able to compose faster than 250 words an hour. Seriously. That has been my pace since high school. However, wonderful Lee pointed out that if I just wrote the fucking sentence, my pace may increase considerably.
So, with an optimistic mindset, I'm going to do my best to implement this from here on out. I've got nothing to lose but some old bad habits. There's no reason why I should continue to hamstring myself with an "artistic temperament". Besides, if I don't knuckly down and "write the fucking sentence" Lee will scowl at me and we can't have that.
I was chatting with Lee Moyer after an event and as usual I received some unexpected advice. If you haven't met Lee, I should explain that not only is he an amazing artist, he's one of the sweetest men on the planet. He also has a habit of giving out unexpected advice and the occasional psycho-analysis to those he cares about. No really, he does and it's not annoying at all. He's says it so sweetly that it's impossible to be offended (which is good because what he says would be hard to hear under other circumstances). On this particular night his advice concerned the real reason as to why I hated my story.
I was being stupid.
That's not what he said per se, but that was his point. Lee explained to me that many artists, regardless of medium, reach a point about halfway to three-quarters through a project where they hate everything about it. They hate the flaws, they hate how much time it's taking to complete, they hate the concept...and when that happens, you have two choices.
1) You can give up.
2) You can press on and finish the project.
Obviously, option two is the right choice because no one wants to buy an unfinished project. So how does a frustrated writer get out of this mess? This was Lee's answer:
"Write the fucking sentence."
I have to admit, this made me laugh. He was so sweet when he said it, it was hard not to. (Did I mention that he's a sweetie?) I was also a little sad that I'm not a romance writer. If I was than I could take his advice literally.
But all levity aside, he's right (as usual). I needed to get over myself and "write the fucking sentence". I was wasting too much time and energy grousing about what the story wasn't when I could have been using that time and energy to make it what I wanted. The "if you polish a turd, it's still a turd" mentality wasn't going to get me anywhere and (as Lee also pointed out) may be crippling me. During the course of our conversation I mentioned that I felt pressured to write as perfect a first draft as possible. I know, that's a ridiculous expectation, but I only have a few hours a day in which to write and I've never been able to compose faster than 250 words an hour. Seriously. That has been my pace since high school. However, wonderful Lee pointed out that if I just wrote the fucking sentence, my pace may increase considerably.
So, with an optimistic mindset, I'm going to do my best to implement this from here on out. I've got nothing to lose but some old bad habits. There's no reason why I should continue to hamstring myself with an "artistic temperament". Besides, if I don't knuckly down and "write the fucking sentence" Lee will scowl at me and we can't have that.
Monday, October 29, 2012
The coming storm
Get your survival gear and batten down the hatches because it's...
NaNoWriMo! (Dun dun dun)
What? Did you think I was talking about Hurricane Sandy?
We inturrupt your regularly scheduled blog for a message from our socially conscious host:
My thoughts and prayers are with those on the East Coast. Stay safe and for heaven's sake, stay home! I know it's not every day a hurricane knocks on your door, but seriously people, don't become victims of storm stupidity. I know the monster waves are cool and you want to witness them first hand, but do you really need to risk getting washed out to sea or impaled by a golf club? God gave us Hi-def TV for a reason. I'm just sayin'.
Now back to the program.
November is nigh and even though there are natural storms and political storms brewing, don't forget to prepare for the annual writing flurry that is NaNoWriMo. Get your personal affairs in order, clean the house (because let's face it, you're not going to be vacuuming when you could be writing instead), stock up on your favorite writing snacks (hopefully healthy ones) and caffeinated beverages, and set the DVR to record the football games and TV shows.
What's that? You're not doing NaNo this year? Why the hell not?! Just because you don't think you can write 50,000 words in a month doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. I've never written that much in a month and aren't likely to until I can afford to write full-time but I still do NaNo...in a fashion. Rather than a true NaNoWriMo novel, I work on my WIP and set a word count goal that I normally wouldn't reach before the end of the month. In a normal month I write about 500 words a day, six days a week. That's about 13,000 words before edits (because I can't resist the urge to edit). During NaNo I push that daily goal to 1,000 so my monthly goal is only 30,000 words. It never gets me anywhere near the end of my novel, but I'm a lot closer at the end of November than I normally would be. Plus, since it's not a throwaway project that I'm doing just for the sake of NaNo, they're all productive words and I don't have to transition back into the WIP in December either.
If you're not doing NaNo because it conflicts with the holidays or some other activity, don't let that hold you back either. Last year, I started three days late because of my sister's wedding. When Thanksgiving day rolled around, I rose early so I could go for my morning walk and still get some writing in before the baking and festivities began. I even took a night off to go watch The Muppet Movie with Mary Robinette Kowal, Lee Moyer, and Brent Weeks because not even NaNoWriMo was going to make me pass up an opportunity like that. I didn't meet my word goal last year. I was about 8,000 words shy if I recall, but I don't count last year or any year as a failure. The whole point behind NaNo is to get people to stop aspiring of being a writer by being a writer. If I wrote more than my normal word count in November, I count that as a successful NaNo. If I learned how to manage my time better or how to ignore distractions better, than I also count that as a NaNo success.
When it comes to giving gifts, everyone says that it's the thought that matters. I believe that when it comes to NaNoWriMo, it's the intent of NaNo and what you intend to get out of it that matters. Keep that in mind and there's no way you can fail. With that in mind, Happy NaNo everyone!
If you want to keep tabs on how my NaNo is going, I'll be posting regular updates on my G+ and Facebook pages.
NaNoWriMo! (Dun dun dun)
What? Did you think I was talking about Hurricane Sandy?
We inturrupt your regularly scheduled blog for a message from our socially conscious host:
My thoughts and prayers are with those on the East Coast. Stay safe and for heaven's sake, stay home! I know it's not every day a hurricane knocks on your door, but seriously people, don't become victims of storm stupidity. I know the monster waves are cool and you want to witness them first hand, but do you really need to risk getting washed out to sea or impaled by a golf club? God gave us Hi-def TV for a reason. I'm just sayin'.
Now back to the program.
November is nigh and even though there are natural storms and political storms brewing, don't forget to prepare for the annual writing flurry that is NaNoWriMo. Get your personal affairs in order, clean the house (because let's face it, you're not going to be vacuuming when you could be writing instead), stock up on your favorite writing snacks (hopefully healthy ones) and caffeinated beverages, and set the DVR to record the football games and TV shows.
What's that? You're not doing NaNo this year? Why the hell not?! Just because you don't think you can write 50,000 words in a month doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. I've never written that much in a month and aren't likely to until I can afford to write full-time but I still do NaNo...in a fashion. Rather than a true NaNoWriMo novel, I work on my WIP and set a word count goal that I normally wouldn't reach before the end of the month. In a normal month I write about 500 words a day, six days a week. That's about 13,000 words before edits (because I can't resist the urge to edit). During NaNo I push that daily goal to 1,000 so my monthly goal is only 30,000 words. It never gets me anywhere near the end of my novel, but I'm a lot closer at the end of November than I normally would be. Plus, since it's not a throwaway project that I'm doing just for the sake of NaNo, they're all productive words and I don't have to transition back into the WIP in December either.
If you're not doing NaNo because it conflicts with the holidays or some other activity, don't let that hold you back either. Last year, I started three days late because of my sister's wedding. When Thanksgiving day rolled around, I rose early so I could go for my morning walk and still get some writing in before the baking and festivities began. I even took a night off to go watch The Muppet Movie with Mary Robinette Kowal, Lee Moyer, and Brent Weeks because not even NaNoWriMo was going to make me pass up an opportunity like that. I didn't meet my word goal last year. I was about 8,000 words shy if I recall, but I don't count last year or any year as a failure. The whole point behind NaNo is to get people to stop aspiring of being a writer by being a writer. If I wrote more than my normal word count in November, I count that as a successful NaNo. If I learned how to manage my time better or how to ignore distractions better, than I also count that as a NaNo success.
When it comes to giving gifts, everyone says that it's the thought that matters. I believe that when it comes to NaNoWriMo, it's the intent of NaNo and what you intend to get out of it that matters. Keep that in mind and there's no way you can fail. With that in mind, Happy NaNo everyone!
If you want to keep tabs on how my NaNo is going, I'll be posting regular updates on my G+ and Facebook pages.
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