YAWriter
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Transcribe my novel at 1 page per d...
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YAWriter commits to:
I, Andy C, commit to transcribe my middle grade novel at the pace of 1 page (250 words) per day until it is fully transcribed. I wrote the first draft by hand, and I seem to need printed copy in order to really root around in the story. So the next draft is simply transcription. I'll revise as I go, of course. A 250-words-per-day pace should be easy to maintain over the summer as I'm working on other projects.
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My Commitment Journal
 YAWriter
May 25, 2014, 4:40 AM
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| Pushed the draft up over 11,000 today. Not bad. Far ahead of schedule and I'm now going to do some "scripting" to re-imagine backward and forward and outward. | |
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YAWriter
May 23, 2014, 6:33 PM
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Yesterday ended with the draft at over 10,100 words. Also, because I'm ahead of schedule on it and don't feel the NEED to keep adding to it, I was able to out some hard time in at the chocolate shop, caffeinating, reading, and re-conceiving a short side project (a story of about 550 words that needed rewriting). Re-conceiving this story involved a lot of scripting on paper (relating to my previous post). Already today I've typed up a new draft of that side project, and it's at a good place. I'm now ready to add some words to the project I'm working on for this commitment. Another note: Getting my booty out of the house to script seems to help me kick out pages and ideas, especially when I don't have anywhere to be and can loiter. This may relate to that phenomenon of the new connections created when working on a project in a new setting: the new setting offers new stimuli that resonate in weird, surprising, chaotic, serendipitious ways with the project. I'm not bactracking to respell these misspelled words. If everything relates to everything else, then imagine all the associations waiting to be made! Well, one can't imagine these associations and is not even aware of many (most?) associations the brain's making between new stimuli and project--so that's why one must get the hell out of The Room now and then and work amid the world! |
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YAWriter
May 21, 2014, 5:26 PM
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Yesterday I took the draft up to over 8500 words. A good day. Today I'm going to hit that goal of transcribing 250 and then see what happens. I'm following a different process with this story than I have with others lately. My process had been to script by hand first, focusing on dialogue and giving only little notes and cues about setting and action etc. I would script many scenes this way--and many takes of scenes--before going to the computer to type the scripted stuff into a draft (transforming things as I typed, of course). The advantage of focusing on dialogue first allowed me to focus most of my attention on only one agenda: cultivating the VOICES and thus the INDIVIDUALITIES of the characters. What would each characters say (in other words, what are each character's motivation and attitude?)? And how might they imbue what they say with their own individuality? Isolating character development in this way, at this initial stage, simplifies the tough task of storywriting. I can put off some of the other agendas (plotting, setting, etc.) so that my brain doesn't have a fucking meltdown. However, because I never scripted this story first--I went straight to drafting--I'm finding that, at least in these early chapters, my characters don't have as much individuality in the things they do and how they do them, in the things they say and how they say them. In short, the characters aren't as cultivated as I'd like them to be by the time I'm drafting on the computer. That said, having a low word count to meet (a 250-words-per-day pace, which I'm far ahead of), encourages me to a) push the story forward a little bit each day, and, perhaps more important, b) go away from my "goal task" to do things that might better serve my overall purpose--making a good story. In other words, the best thing for cultivating my story is not always sitting at the screen and drafting--sometimes it's sitting with a notebook and scripting immersing myself in my characters' voices and exploring possibilities. Having a goal of 1500 words per day might help me write to the end of a draft faster, but it wouldn't give me leeway to charge off the trail, brandishing my machete, to do some bushwhacking for a while. |
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YAWriter
May 20, 2014, 5:13 PM
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| Yesterday I put up (put down?) a lot of words. The transcribed novel's at over 7,000, so I'm well ahead of schedule. I could take a break for a while but I SHALL NOT. Starting my writing/transcribing for the day...NOW | |
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