Evolving writing process.
Jun. 27th, 2012 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinSo, several weeks back I had the realization that if I could steal time to write 500 words a day I'd have 2000 words of Tales of MU every posting day, what I consider to be the bare minimum for a chapter. Bare minimum chapters aren't great and I'm never satisfied with bare minimum, but sometimes... bare minimum happens. When conditions are slightly better, having 1,5000 words going into a posting day gives me a lot to work with. When conditions are much better, there's no reason to limit myself to 500 words a day.
Twice since then I've postponed a chapter anyway, because I'm still forming the habit for this new part of my process and the sort of circumstances it's meant to deal with just piled up. But I'm already refining it.
500 words is a minimum, a floor. Now, context is everything. If there's nothing else around it to fix it is as below, then a floor might as well be a ceiling. I don't want to put a ceiling on my productivity, but I need to set a number above it.
Day one of the four day cycle, 500 words is fine. That's my whole goal, day one is the "conceptual" day anyway. It's when I start figuring out what the chapter's about. If I write something on day one, it's the most likely thing to be thrown out or written over anyway.
Day two of the four day cycle is when I look for an opening to the story, an angle of approach for it. The "beginning" phase. It's not necessarily when I write the opening lines, it's when I write the part that's going to lead to me writing the rest of it. 500's still the floor, but the goal is a thousand words.
Day three of the four day cycle is when, theoretically, I "write the chapter". I look at what I have and start writing in earnest. The body of the chapter should be done by this day, if things are going well. It might have some placeholders, it might be lacking a true beginning or ending, but it should be basically done. As often as not, this ends up happening on day 4. That's why the goal for day three is going to be 1,500 words.
So if I'm hitting the floor on every day, I start day four with 1,500 words and end it with 2,000 words. If I'm hitting the target, I go into day four with 3,000 words... my ultimate target for a chapter. If I feel there's more to be said I can keep going. If it needs work I can work on it. If it's well and truly done I can jump into day one of the next time around.
All this is based on how things tend to work out when they're going moderately well... when they're going awesome I can sit down and bang out two or three thousand words and it's pretty coherent and better written then when I'm piecing together 500 word efforts, but you can't exactly manufacture awesome, though I base my processes on the idea that you can coax out some good.
Twice since then I've postponed a chapter anyway, because I'm still forming the habit for this new part of my process and the sort of circumstances it's meant to deal with just piled up. But I'm already refining it.
500 words is a minimum, a floor. Now, context is everything. If there's nothing else around it to fix it is as below, then a floor might as well be a ceiling. I don't want to put a ceiling on my productivity, but I need to set a number above it.
Day one of the four day cycle, 500 words is fine. That's my whole goal, day one is the "conceptual" day anyway. It's when I start figuring out what the chapter's about. If I write something on day one, it's the most likely thing to be thrown out or written over anyway.
Day two of the four day cycle is when I look for an opening to the story, an angle of approach for it. The "beginning" phase. It's not necessarily when I write the opening lines, it's when I write the part that's going to lead to me writing the rest of it. 500's still the floor, but the goal is a thousand words.
Day three of the four day cycle is when, theoretically, I "write the chapter". I look at what I have and start writing in earnest. The body of the chapter should be done by this day, if things are going well. It might have some placeholders, it might be lacking a true beginning or ending, but it should be basically done. As often as not, this ends up happening on day 4. That's why the goal for day three is going to be 1,500 words.
So if I'm hitting the floor on every day, I start day four with 1,500 words and end it with 2,000 words. If I'm hitting the target, I go into day four with 3,000 words... my ultimate target for a chapter. If I feel there's more to be said I can keep going. If it needs work I can work on it. If it's well and truly done I can jump into day one of the next time around.
All this is based on how things tend to work out when they're going moderately well... when they're going awesome I can sit down and bang out two or three thousand words and it's pretty coherent and better written then when I'm piecing together 500 word efforts, but you can't exactly manufacture awesome, though I base my processes on the idea that you can coax out some good.