Getting whipped

About this time last year I was incredibly stuck. Stuck writing 250 wpm, stuck hating my WIP, and stuck thinking that I bit off more than I could chew. That's when a good friend told me to write the f&#*ing sentence. When I first talked about it I had just started to implement that advice. I managed to get to 300 wpm and was working on the rest. After a year of writing the f&#*ing sentence, the difference is astounding.

The most obvious change is that I'm now writing 500 wpm with bursts up to 600. I've more than doubled my output. That's pretty freaking awesome. Better yet, I no longer see ______ word count as being impossible. I know a few people who can write 1K an hour and while I'm not at that speed yet, I believe that I can -- that's a huge step right there.

Another huge step is that I can look at daunting scenes and say "I'm not sure I can pull it off but I'm going to try." and mean it. It took a good part of the year to get that through my thick skull. I still have the occasional "what was I thinking" moment but every time that happens I hear Lee's voice in my head and get back to work. In some ways he's kind of become my shoulder angel. Except instead of wielding a harp and kind word it's a whip and some tough love. That statement might be a little too revealing but that doesn't make it any less true.

This philosophy has bolstered my confidence so that I no longer feel like a newbie that can't do anything right. Instead I see myself as an up and coming writer with a lot of potential. If that's the result of getting whipped once perhaps it needs to happen more often?

Project WtFS

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.