Well that was a helpful experiment
Well, after 29 days of NaNoFauxMo, I have very slightly over 25035 words out of the aimed-for 50,000.
Now, I don't consider this a total failure. Some of this was my... I would say fault, but I'm not beating myself up about it; part of it isn't, not because things happened to interrupt it but because I hadn't laid the ground for it to make it clear: "I will be doing this writing, it will intrude on certain events, I will be looking for writing time on days where things are happening"; this was because The Government Inspector was on the 30th and 31st of March and there was no room for anything else in my head or my conversations with others, so you could say I hadn't laid the ground.
However, it's still a far more successful writing episode than I've ever had before (at least in terms of productivity- not sure how to sort out my plotting issues yet, but I believe the point is that you're too busy piling up words to get paralysed by that.
So, yeah, I'm carrying on. I've discovered that I can; I've discovered how I can. My secret seems to be not location (cafes are too interesting) or music per se (also too interesting) but playing spoken-word radio that is either not so scintillating that I want to really listen, or that I've heard before. Not as white noise exactly- I mean, I do hear the programme too I could probably outline the plot of the episode of 'Dad's Army' I listened to while writing part of the last scene- but it does provide two means of stimulation at once between which my mind can't possibly wander. (I suppose if I could actually type while I run that would be even better. Not that I plot while I run- when I run I'm mostly thinking about running- but it's probably similar- my head would be empty of everything I could be writing, or that I was planning to write at some point in ten pages time, and just be focused on what I wrote as I wrote it, if you know what I mean.) The quality of the work may suffer for all I know, but it's impossible to compare it to something that I might have written if my mind hadn't completely jammed up and gone off into designing costumes for La Fllle du Regiment and explaining to myself about the problem with that article that Hannah's mother linked to the other day. So now, after about 20 years' trying, I know how to do high-volume writing at a relatively practical speed.
(On the other hand, while I'm not going to post until I'm done, if anyone wants to read personally as a WiP, i'd be happy to. It's a bit lonely writing long-haul alone. I've realised now why I kind of chickened out of original fic- you're in it for a solo long-haul even after you've finished writing...)
Now, I don't consider this a total failure. Some of this was my... I would say fault, but I'm not beating myself up about it; part of it isn't, not because things happened to interrupt it but because I hadn't laid the ground for it to make it clear: "I will be doing this writing, it will intrude on certain events, I will be looking for writing time on days where things are happening"; this was because The Government Inspector was on the 30th and 31st of March and there was no room for anything else in my head or my conversations with others, so you could say I hadn't laid the ground.
However, it's still a far more successful writing episode than I've ever had before (at least in terms of productivity- not sure how to sort out my plotting issues yet, but I believe the point is that you're too busy piling up words to get paralysed by that.
So, yeah, I'm carrying on. I've discovered that I can; I've discovered how I can. My secret seems to be not location (cafes are too interesting) or music per se (also too interesting) but playing spoken-word radio that is either not so scintillating that I want to really listen, or that I've heard before. Not as white noise exactly- I mean, I do hear the programme too I could probably outline the plot of the episode of 'Dad's Army' I listened to while writing part of the last scene- but it does provide two means of stimulation at once between which my mind can't possibly wander. (I suppose if I could actually type while I run that would be even better. Not that I plot while I run- when I run I'm mostly thinking about running- but it's probably similar- my head would be empty of everything I could be writing, or that I was planning to write at some point in ten pages time, and just be focused on what I wrote as I wrote it, if you know what I mean.) The quality of the work may suffer for all I know, but it's impossible to compare it to something that I might have written if my mind hadn't completely jammed up and gone off into designing costumes for La Fllle du Regiment and explaining to myself about the problem with that article that Hannah's mother linked to the other day. So now, after about 20 years' trying, I know how to do high-volume writing at a relatively practical speed.
(On the other hand, while I'm not going to post until I'm done, if anyone wants to read personally as a WiP, i'd be happy to. It's a bit lonely writing long-haul alone. I've realised now why I kind of chickened out of original fic- you're in it for a solo long-haul even after you've finished writing...)