Experimental Writing Routine

There was this idea that came to me, and it was an idea that's made up of many different ideas, and when you pick apart these ideas into separate ones, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  It was one of those kinds of ideas.

The idea, in its finality, is this: If I ever have to write under a deadline, a good writing system might be to plot out a section of my story during the week (Monday thru Friday) and then write on the weekend.

I will actually go ahead and explain the pieces here.

Firstly, writing under deadline, I've heard, is ridiculously stressful and sometimes very difficult.  So difficult that many authors have reported their tardiness on multiple occasions and lauded the awesomeness of their agents and editors and their forgiveness.  I'm terrified of writing under a deadline, but also I'll admit, a bit excited, too, because due to the fact I am scared of being "in trouble," deadlines are a sure fire way of getting me to get stuff done, even if it is at the very last possible moment.  Having a writing system that works for me would be critical were I ever to have to write under a deadline.

Then I started to think about how much I could physically type.  My typing speed is at over 100 WPM (words per minute).  So I did some math.  (Math on school break, aren't you proud of me?)

If I wrote at a consistent 100 words per minute for an hour, that's 6,000 words per hour.  Say I did what Stephen King (and my dad) advises and write for at least four hours in a day.  In a single day, that's 24,000 words.  If I were to dedicate a weekend to my story and write 100 words per minute for four hours a day for two days, I could have a 48,000 word chunk of my story.  That's roughly half to a third or fourth of a YA novel.  (It's probably about a third of my current project.)

This was a great idea when it came sparkling into my thoughts, but then reality took a pailful of water and dumped it over all the glitter, leaving a runny mess.

I am not a consistent writer and I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am not much of a pantster, especially on a novel-long scale.  I write better and faster when I have an outline to tell me where I need to end up.  As long as I have the beats of a scene, I'm cool with spontaneity.  I like my characters to surprise me with their dialogue and weird habits, etc., but only if I end up at the correct end goal.

I figured that I most likely would not consistently write 100 words per minute even with an outline, but mentally, I would regard it as my maximum.  I am limited by how fast I can physically type.  This is somehow comforting to me.

I'm not quite sure what to use as my goal, because I know I won't be able to clock in 100 WPM consistently for four hours.  What I'm going to do this weekend is write as much as what I'm comfortable with, and then use that as my baseline for future weekends.

What do y'all think?  What different writing routines have you tried?

I Wish I Could Write About My Routine

I love hearing about my favorite author's writing routine.  They don't vary overly much: there's usually a block of time that the author sets aside to writewritewrite, but even with its simplicity, it's admirable.

(Though, quite honestly, I don't think I could sit and write for hours without some kind of break.  Nor do I think I could write all day long like a full-time job.)

When I interview authors, one of the questions I like to ask is "What's your writing environment like?"  I'm not quite sure what my fascination is.  Maybe it's that I like to know they're real people, too.

One of the things I really wish I could write in a blog post about, is my writing routine.

It's hard to write about a routine you don't have.

One of the things my dad liked to tell me when he was trying to get me to commit to my writing, was how Stephen King was religious in his writing routine.  (I scoffed at first.  Not at Stephen King, but at my dad, who is a non-reader and very much a non-writer.)

It's true, though.  Stephen King has a religious writing routine.  He writes every single day.  And look how many books he's publishing.  Like, a ton every year.

I can admire Stephen King for his ability to write, even if I can't really appreciate his stories.  So this whole idea about writing every day is one I should consider seriously because it's something that works for one of the world's great writers.

So what do I do every day?

My problem is that I don't write every day.  Heck, I'm lucky if I can get my butt in gear long enough to write once a week.

It used to be -- "used to be" referring to a time a long, long time ago -- I loved writing.  I looked forward to doing it every day, but I think it was mostly because I was supposed to be doing other things.  (Read: my schoolwork.)  I wrote my first book in a month.

Now, it wasn't a very good book.  I mean, God, it made Twilight look like the epitome of literary greatness.  But it was a completed manuscript about high school drama and it may or may not have resembled a season of Pretty Little Liars.

I also finished the first draft of a supernatural story about a mind reader.  Again, it sucked, but good grief, first drafts are supposed to suck.  But I was a little older and I'd discovered better things than Twilight and so it was a little better than my first book.

I haven't completed the first draft of a book since that time.  That was six years ago.

My other problem, besides not writing every day, is that I can't keep my focus on a single story.  I hop around like a hyperactive squirrel, from one shiny idea to another.  And I don't know why.  I've tried to force myself to stick with one story, but then I grow resentful and bitter towards whatever I'm working on.

It's times like this when I want to find a nice hard surface to bang my head on.

What I'm doing now is slightly different, and I hope it'll work.

I'm focusing on what I love to read and watch.  I'm starting to actively go over the things that attract me in stories and TV shows.  For example:

• I love the adventure and hero's journey in the BBC show, Merlin.
• I love the master-apprentice relationship (and the archery) in the Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan.
• I love the epic stories of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.
• I love the detailed universe of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, as well as the fantastically presented characters.
• I love the cleverness in the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer.
• I love the romance in Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi and The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen.

That was an abbreviated list, but one of the things I noticed was that whatever genre it is, I'm sure to fall head over heels in love with a hero's journey.

Now, there's something I can work with: I love hero's journeys.

The good news is that I've seen hero's journeys in more than one genre.  For example: Harry Potter and Percy Jackson (modern fantasy), Eragon and Ranger's Apprentice and Merlin (medieval fantasy), and Star Wars (science fiction).

What I'm doing now is actively noticing things I love in stories and writing them down.  And I've got this story idea brewing in my head but I'm not forcing it out.  I'm giving it no more than a passing glance, so as not to scare it into taking a single shape.  I want it to be whatever it wants to be, not what I think it should be.

What I do know, though, is that there's a boy and his story goes throughout his adolescence and into young manhood.  I don't know his name, but I can picture him.

Strangely enough, I haven't written about a boy before.  I haven't written a classic-style hero's journey, like the kind I adore reading and watching.  So this is different for me as a writer.  All of the main characters in the big projects I've worked on over the years are all scarily similar.  Here's a change in pace, and it might be exactly what I need to get a story finished.

Start With Certainty in Darkness

I found this quote in Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg that I felt I should share:

So when we write and begin with an empty page and a heart unsure, a famine of thoughts, a fear of no feeling -- just begin from there, from that electricity.  This kind of writing is uncontrolled, is not sure where the outcome is, and it begins in ignorance and darkness.

Natalie Goldberg has some crazy mental powers, because it feels like every other page she's reaching into my mind and plucking out my exact thoughts.

(Not) Writing in Brilliant Weather

Writing for You vs. Writing for the Readers

So I got a new issue of Writer's Digest in the mail today -- happy day!  The first article I read was in the Inkwell section, an advice short called "One in a Million."  The one sentence teaser read:

Here's why you should be crafting your book with one specific reader in mind--and that reader isn't you.

Start Now

Dedication and Discomfort

I was navigating through Evernote on my way to add some new notes to an idea I recently had when I found this:

This is a screen cap of one of Justine Musk's brilliant blog posts.

I like this idea - "experimenting with small actions that fall outside our comfort zone, retreating to the comfort zone to rest and regroup, stepping outside of it again."  I like that, for once, I've been given permission to shamelessly step back in to my comfort zone.  Normally when I hear the phrase to step out of it, I panic.  Because I assume I'm not allowed to step back in.

Having the comfort of knowing I can step back in makes me braver.

"We can learn how to act in the face of it."  To me, this is a brilliant rendition of practice, practice, practice.  That's all I've been hearing for years: you learn to write by writing.  "We can learn how to act in the face of it," packs this moral background that appeals to me.  It's a phrase that applies to life, too, not just writing.

I'm going to try this.  I'm going to try and go through the steps of not being afraid of writing a novel.  So I start with what I can do: a word.  Then maybe hammer out a sentence.  Then sweat through a paragraph.  Then bleed out for a page.  And maybe, by the time I'm finished with the story, I'll be so rough-skinned and battle-scarred that I can howl a triumph war cry.

I like that image.  :)

When I Turn Green

Reading for Inspiration

My Hauntings Are My Themes

The Strike of the Uninspired Monster