At LDStorymakers this last May, my favorite workshop I
attended was by the woman who actually put on the conference this year—Melanie Jacobsen.
She talked all about how she makes herself be productive in her writing no
matter how busy she is. It was really great and practical, and I came away
ready to apply everything she said.
I didn’t. Part of my problem is I’m not actually in the
writing stage I’m in the editing stage. I found myself wanting a follow-up
class about how I can make sure I am productive in editing/rewriting, which in
some ways is a whole different beast than writing your first draft.
Here are the ways I’ve applied some of her advice and also
figured out my own:
1.
Have and
update your outline. I’m a total pantser. All the way, 100%. But, even the
most hard-core pantser needs to create an outline as they are writing the rough
draft, and then update that as you edit. Otherwise you get soooo lost. And have
no idea what’s going on. And your story will make no sense. Basically,
organization has to kick in at some point. It’s still flexible. You can still
change things whenever you want. You just need some way to keep track of what
you’re doing and what needs to be fixed as you edit.
2.
Schedule
time to write. This is basic, but I keep forgetting it all the time. I
think I’ll just want to write, it will just happen magically because I’ll feel
so inspired. But most of the time, I have to schedule it and I have to make an
annoying reminder to beep at me in my phone over and over before I’ll actually
get myself to write/edit consistently.
Because it is a thousand times easier to write today when you’ve already
written yesterday. Momentum is a big deal. Plus, I’m so Type A that I’m
obsessed with checking things off my list—so if I put writing on my list every
single day, I’m more likely to do it so I can check it off. And then I feel so
good and productive that I want to do it again tomorrow. It works.
3.
Write a
blurb of what you’re going to write tomorrow. This is the one thing from
Melanie’s presentation that I’ve actually been applying. It’s so helpful.
Everyday once I’m done writing, I write a paragraph or so about what I’m going
to write about tomorrow. Sometimes dialogue starts coming to me and I write it
down. Sometimes I end up writing a whole page. Whatever, that’s great. That
means I’ve already got the inspiration going for the next day without putting
the pressure on myself for it to be “perfect” like I do when I sit down and
write for real. If I’m not totally rewriting a scene but just editing it a
little, I write down exactly what I need to go through and edit for. Then the
next day I know exactly what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, and that makes it
easier to start—especially since sometimes rewriting something can seem more overwhelming
that writing it in the first place.
4.
Stop
worrying about it being perfect. This relates to a point I just brought up
in the last one. When you’re on your third or fourth or tenth draft, but you’re
writing a whole new scene that you’re adding in or basically completely redoing
a scene that was there before, you’re basically back in rough draft land for
that scene and that can be frustrating. Because you’ve already gone over this
thing how many times now? But it’s OK. It still doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s
never going to be perfect. It just needs to be written and then you can look at
it later and then show it to your critique group and clean it up. For the
millionth time. I used to think that just writing a novel took patience. I’ve
realized that’s nothing compared to the patience it takes to edit a novel. And
I’m not even close to done. Sigh. Patience.
And all those things have helped me to be much more
productive lately, which is great.
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