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A Wind Out of Space
Jan. 14th, 2009 01:43 pmThat's always what I think of, when dealing--not that I have dealt, today, because I've stayed firmly indoors fighting what feels like an overwhelming urge to crap out everything inside my body--with temperatures of 22 degrees and windchill that makes it feel 30. Tomorrow, apparently, will be even colder; yet Steve still got Cal to school and back (I packed!), and Rod managed to get his ass over here for Cal's therapy. Which means I definitely need to move my keister in the direction of the gym for BodyCombat, come 6:00 PM, and I better have made at least some inroads into making my daily word-count, when I do.
There's a great essay about managing to write consistently even in the face of Internettish distractions currently up at the Locusmag site, by Cory Doctorow (who else?). I'm impressed by a bunch of his recommendations, particularly the idea of skipping research until the second draft--he just writes "TK" wherever he needs to check a fact, then does find-and-replace afterwards, fixing what's missing--and that once you have made your mandatory words, you should just quit in the middle of a sentence, leaving a "rough edge" to build on for the next go-'round. It goes back to that thing I was talking about earlier with "Strange Weight", the habit I tried so hard to break myself of, which involves me going back over the last page or so and fixing it before I start over; I used to think this was a time-sink, but now I'm not so sure.
On the whole, my process on a given project (if anyone's interested) tends to go like this:
Frenzied brainstorming/note-taking
Inputting notes
Outlining/writing
Distraction/dealing with other projects
More frenzied note-taking
Return to project at hand
Repeat, ad inferno
This is why I carry a million pens and three notebooks, yet still have a crap-load of loose, scribbled-on pieces of paper filtering around in my bag, all of which need to be coallated and inputted at least once every few days (last night I spend an amusing ten minutes trying to figure out where the thematic spine of my latest Cool & Dark column turned into stuff like [Character One] accidentally sees [Characters Two and Three] having sex, and is disturbed by what they're doing. This is why I interrupt whatever I'm doing to rush off to the bathroom and write down dialogue exchanges--indeed, why I most often emerge from a long walk with iPod accompaniment, the bath or a solitary work-out muttering to myself in other people's voices...and that's on the good weeks. That's what I want to be happening.
Much worse are the phases in which I can't do a damn thing, sustainedly, except open files and stare at them for a while until my internal editor yells: STOP it! This shit REEKS! Which is why I'm really happy that although it's difficult to be riding several deadlines at the same time, I am actually riding them--that I got my new Year Zero outline done last night, and off to Michael, though A) it ain't perfect (far from) and B) it sure ain't over. He's already gotten back to me with notes I know are necessary, but are tipping us firmly back towards a three-hour first draft, and I'm pretty much fine with that: We'll let it play out, see what it looks like when it's done, then make the necessary trims and reshaping. As I used to tell all my students, it's substantially easier to cut than it is to pad, which is why first draft is never the place to be playing those sort of games with yourself.
Anyhoo. The timer has gone off--thanks for the idea, greygirlbeast--so I'm officially done with this blog, at least until I'm officially done with Tongues and "Strange Weight" for today. See you then?
There's a great essay about managing to write consistently even in the face of Internettish distractions currently up at the Locusmag site, by Cory Doctorow (who else?). I'm impressed by a bunch of his recommendations, particularly the idea of skipping research until the second draft--he just writes "TK" wherever he needs to check a fact, then does find-and-replace afterwards, fixing what's missing--and that once you have made your mandatory words, you should just quit in the middle of a sentence, leaving a "rough edge" to build on for the next go-'round. It goes back to that thing I was talking about earlier with "Strange Weight", the habit I tried so hard to break myself of, which involves me going back over the last page or so and fixing it before I start over; I used to think this was a time-sink, but now I'm not so sure.
On the whole, my process on a given project (if anyone's interested) tends to go like this:
Frenzied brainstorming/note-taking
Inputting notes
Outlining/writing
Distraction/dealing with other projects
More frenzied note-taking
Return to project at hand
Repeat, ad inferno
This is why I carry a million pens and three notebooks, yet still have a crap-load of loose, scribbled-on pieces of paper filtering around in my bag, all of which need to be coallated and inputted at least once every few days (last night I spend an amusing ten minutes trying to figure out where the thematic spine of my latest Cool & Dark column turned into stuff like [Character One] accidentally sees [Characters Two and Three] having sex, and is disturbed by what they're doing. This is why I interrupt whatever I'm doing to rush off to the bathroom and write down dialogue exchanges--indeed, why I most often emerge from a long walk with iPod accompaniment, the bath or a solitary work-out muttering to myself in other people's voices...and that's on the good weeks. That's what I want to be happening.
Much worse are the phases in which I can't do a damn thing, sustainedly, except open files and stare at them for a while until my internal editor yells: STOP it! This shit REEKS! Which is why I'm really happy that although it's difficult to be riding several deadlines at the same time, I am actually riding them--that I got my new Year Zero outline done last night, and off to Michael, though A) it ain't perfect (far from) and B) it sure ain't over. He's already gotten back to me with notes I know are necessary, but are tipping us firmly back towards a three-hour first draft, and I'm pretty much fine with that: We'll let it play out, see what it looks like when it's done, then make the necessary trims and reshaping. As I used to tell all my students, it's substantially easier to cut than it is to pad, which is why first draft is never the place to be playing those sort of games with yourself.
Anyhoo. The timer has gone off--thanks for the idea, greygirlbeast--so I'm officially done with this blog, at least until I'm officially done with Tongues and "Strange Weight" for today. See you then?
