So, while I’m continuing to work in Fast Draft form, I thought I’d pause and post my thoughts on why it’s effective. It sounds insane on the surface; no time to write? Write 20 pages a day for two weeks! You don’t magically get more time or energy during those two weeks. Yet, the pages get done. Why? How?
First of all, it’s short term. If I told myself I had to write 20 pages a day every day forever I’d probably have a nervous breakdown on the spot. Also, without interruptions in the workflow the story is able to gain momentum. Start and stop is the worst way to write, for me at least. Every time I’m interrupted, I have to start all over again. It’s excruciating and progress is nearly invisible, which is discouraging. With Fast Draft, I have no interruptions. I build up momentum once and keep it. And I have lots of measurable progress every day, which is exciting and it builds my enthusiasm to keep going. Because I can see it’s working.
Possibly most importantly, there’s no time to second-guess and because it’s only one day’s work I’m a lot more willling to charge ahead knowing I may have taken a wrong turn that I’ll have to cut later if it doesn’t work.
For instance, I came up with a fix that resolved my lack of conflict (hero and heroine’s goals were too similar and they wanted to live happily ever after in chapter one). The next morning, I looked at my fix and thought, “that will never work”. Then I thought, well, write it anyway. If I go forward with this and it doesn’t work, I’ll find that out. I was willing to waste 20 pages because of the production mindset. In 2 pages here and there fits and starts writing, I didn’t feel I could afford to waste ANY because the clock was ticking and ever word counted.
And yes, the fix worked. It drove the entire plot and produced some absolutely brilliant stuff. That I would have chickened out on and not done, pretty much guaranteed, if I wasnt doing Fast Draft.
I can see that this is an invaluable tool for me, at least. I will continue to utilize Fast Draft and I think it’ll probably allow me to achieve my dream of taking a vacation this year. If I can be more efficient and get the work done faster it’s a lot more likely that I can actually take time off.
I’m so compulsive about editing as I go, I just don’t know if I could do this at the start of a book.
Though with the paranormal I just finished, I did write a hell of a lot of “pre-writing” — about 150 pages worth. I didn’t use most of it, but it helped me find the story — after that, I went to index cards and foam board, and then I started writing, and in the writing, things still changed. But even in the “pre writing” I would read back every day and polish before moving forward…
Different strokes for different folks, but I think I would probably have some kind of seizure if I tried writing without going back and editing, LOL.
Sam
Um. I totally edited as I went. I just didn’t tell anybody. Still managed to make those 20 pages. 😀 I’ll have a little bit of tweaking to do when I go back from the beginning, but not much. I always edit as I go.
Ah, so this isn’t the “don’t look back” kind of philosophy. I could never get hold of that. Writing 20 pages a day unless I’m under deadline… hmmmm. Maybe I’ll try it again when I have some free time and new book. 😉
Sam
I’m amazed that you can crank out 20 pages a day for two weeks! You go, girl!
NJ, you can do anything for 2 weeks, that’s the beauty of it. *g*
Sam, you’re not supposed to look back, but it’s how I work and I don’t screw with what works for me!
That’s awesome!
I’d never heard of Fast Draft until you and…Jordan? It sounds more appealing than BIAW because it’s a concrete number, not just ‘as much as you can’.
Shannon, it works a lot better than BIAW for me, because I know from the start I can’t write a whole book in that time frame. The 20 page target is a push but achievable. That’s one of the most interesting things to me about this experience, seeing that I could consistently double my typical output without losing quality.