A friend and I challenged each other to write 1000 words of new fiction last week. Then throughout the week we checked in and said how we were doing. And, no big surprise, we both finished our 1000 words.

I managed to get close to double that done without really working too hard on it which probably shows up in the quality of the writing but bad rough draft writing is always better than good plans of writing that never end up getting written.

I did a few things that helped me reach the goal:

• Wrote during the day on my iPod Touch which I always carry. Little 50 word sittings add up over the week. Each day I copied all of that into my more permanent document.
• Wrote during the kids swim class. I normally sit around and read or fight to stay awake.
• Wrote before I went to bed several times.
• Didn’t worry about going back and correcting much. It is just a rough draft so I didn’t feel any of that was really necessary.
• Didn’t worry about other stories rattling around my brain. I just focused on this one. This is frequently a big stumbling block for me.

So what did I end up with.

Most of a short story rough draft. There are two specific scenes that I didn’t get around to writing. Adding them in and improving the descriptions in the story would probably make it about 3000 words which feels like a good length for it. I’ll probably work on adding those scenes and then doing the editing over the next few weeks because it would feel really nice to finish an actual, full first draft and even better to carry it through a round of editing or two.

I had an idea about halfway through the draft that I decided to try. It ended up changing it from a short story to a first chapter of something longer. But I don’t think I really want to go down the full novel route so I will probably just keep it as a nice short story by reworking a couple minor points along the way.

No related posts.

I have virtually no free time and so many big idea plans in my head of things that I want to do and add to an already packed schedule. Instead of making big grandiose writing plans of finishing a novel and winning the Hugo this year, I’m focusing small on my hobby writing.

Really small.

100 words a day.

That frequently takes five to ten minutes. Or less if I have a good idea what I plan to write.

100 words is something that you can do while on hold waiting for a conference call to start at work or while the kids brush their teeth or before you fall asleep or while you wait in line or during a commercial break. 100 words is really nothing at all and barely worth doing.

But.

100 words a day will get me about 3000 words a month pretty easily which would be enough for a rough draft of most of the short stories that I think up. 100 words also frequently turns into 150 when you finish out the paragraph or 500 when you hit a neat little groove. So it is completely reasonable to expect that to turn into about 4-5000 words a month.

Do that for a year and you have a short rough draft of a short novel. Or just a bunch of crappy sentences that count as practice while learning what it takes to right a battle scene or a conversation between a father and son or a political under the table deal or whatever you happen to be hacking away on with your writing.

So far it has gotten me over 1000 words in the last week on the details, details, details story I am working on.

No related posts.

I just started reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I am only a couple chapters in and already drowning in details. Everything, everything and everything is described. Which right away helps define the characters and the things that are important to him by what he decides to tell us and say about them. Instead of just saying he is a rich, elitist type of dude or having other characters say it about him, you learn it by the things the he buys and the things he scoffs others for thinking about and buying.

It provides an interesting distance between the main character and the other characters since there is so much focus on the things and details and less about what he thinks about them.

I have an idea for a plot that I have never started because I can’t get very interested in the main character. One of those destined hero kids.

It might be interesting to tell the story from the older guide who initially saves him and drags him through the world but doesn’t actually like the kid but have that guide character focus on the details to an excessive degree instead of the kid. He could kind of create an emotional distance to the kid by nearly ignoring him and getting lost in the details of the world and the mission. The kid could practically turn into luggage which could present its own problems later on in the story.

Hmm. Sounds like I need to open up a text editor soon and start pounding away.

No related posts.