Writing, fifteen minutes at a time...
artfulruin commented:
"Would you mind talking about your fifteen minute snippet writing method? I'm quite curious."
I wouldn't mind -- but I assure you, it's not glamorous. Not only that, I'm sure I've written about it in this journal before, but I have looked and looked and I can't find the earlier post. It would be more efficient to do it over again than to go on hunting for it.
Whether I'm writing fiction or non-fiction, writing a book or a shorter length, I follow the same set of steps. Suppose I want to write a novel....
1. I write a roughly one-page summary of the book.
2. I break down the summary into chapters -- we can say 25 chapters, for discussion purposes -- and I write a roughly half-page summary of each one.
3. I get 30 file folders. 25 of them get labeled "Chapter 1" and "Chapter 2" and so on; the rest of the folders get labels like "Research" and "Business Correspondence" and "Background" and "Miscellaneous" and "Marketing/Promotion Ideas."
4. I tape or staple the one-page summary of the book to the front of the "Miscellaneous" folder, so that it's always handy to refresh my memory.
5. I tape or staple the half-page summary of each chapter into the front side of its folder -- so that it's always handy to refresh my memory.
6. Working from each of the chapter summaries, I write a very detailed outline of each chapter and drop it into its proper folder. These outlines break down tidily into separate scenes. Much of the time the characters and places at this stage have dummy names like "Mary" and "Town"; when I've decided on a real name, I just use the find-and-replace thingy in my word processor and change all of those at one fell swoop.
As you can see, all of these steps lend themselves to being done in fifteen-minute chunks, whenever I have a free fifteen minutes. Now I have the entire book stashed in my file folders and in my head, I'm ready to actually start writing, and I can start anywhere at all in the book.
I know exactly what happens when and where and why. This means I can pick up the folder for Chapter 7 and spend fifteen minutes writing its opening scene and then put it away, and pick it up again at a later time and spend fifteen minutes expanding the opening scene or writing a different scene... and I just go on that way until I have finished what I call a "brute force rough draft." [Which means that there'll be places where, instead of four polished pages of prose, there's a thing in square brackets that says something like "Insert a scene here that will plausibly get Eleanor so distracted that she forgets to turn off the oven." When I get stuck for the details of a scene, I don't waste time struggling with it; I write a note like that and go on with the brute force rough draft, which is my most urgent goal. And I can of course at any time pick up a folder and work for fifteen minutes on one of those things in square brackets.]
Once that rough draft is finished, I start over, but now I'm revising -- and revising can always be done in fifteen-minute snippets. As long as I'm careful to put a date on every page I write -- so I don't get the various versions mixed up -- I can always work fifteen minutes and then put the work away, and then pick it up again later.
I know people who can write their books this way and just leave them on the computer; I can't do that. I have to have a physical object or the book isn't real to me. I have to print out my drafts and store them in a three-ring binder so that I can judge the size and heft of everything. I can look at a book-in-a-binder and sort of bounce it in my hands and realize that it needs to have a new chapter added between Chapter 7 and Chapter 8. I can't explain how I do that, but I know that if the book is only inside my computer I can't make that sort of judgment.
If I'm doing a nonfiction book instead of a novel, I'm more likely to have 18 chapters instead of 25 -- so, fewer file folders. If I'm doing a short story or an article, I work in "sections," each with its own folder, and I may not need more than three or four folders .... never more than ten. If I'm doing a poem, I may have only one folder. But I work the same way in every case.
And that's how I do it. I could never, never have written all those books while I got a Ph.D. and/or worked one full-time job and two or three part-time jobs and kept house and took care of my kids [and ate, and slept] if I hadn't learned to do it that way.
"Would you mind talking about your fifteen minute snippet writing method? I'm quite curious."
I wouldn't mind -- but I assure you, it's not glamorous. Not only that, I'm sure I've written about it in this journal before, but I have looked and looked and I can't find the earlier post. It would be more efficient to do it over again than to go on hunting for it.
Whether I'm writing fiction or non-fiction, writing a book or a shorter length, I follow the same set of steps. Suppose I want to write a novel....
1. I write a roughly one-page summary of the book.
2. I break down the summary into chapters -- we can say 25 chapters, for discussion purposes -- and I write a roughly half-page summary of each one.
3. I get 30 file folders. 25 of them get labeled "Chapter 1" and "Chapter 2" and so on; the rest of the folders get labels like "Research" and "Business Correspondence" and "Background" and "Miscellaneous" and "Marketing/Promotion Ideas."
4. I tape or staple the one-page summary of the book to the front of the "Miscellaneous" folder, so that it's always handy to refresh my memory.
5. I tape or staple the half-page summary of each chapter into the front side of its folder -- so that it's always handy to refresh my memory.
6. Working from each of the chapter summaries, I write a very detailed outline of each chapter and drop it into its proper folder. These outlines break down tidily into separate scenes. Much of the time the characters and places at this stage have dummy names like "Mary" and "Town"; when I've decided on a real name, I just use the find-and-replace thingy in my word processor and change all of those at one fell swoop.
As you can see, all of these steps lend themselves to being done in fifteen-minute chunks, whenever I have a free fifteen minutes. Now I have the entire book stashed in my file folders and in my head, I'm ready to actually start writing, and I can start anywhere at all in the book.
I know exactly what happens when and where and why. This means I can pick up the folder for Chapter 7 and spend fifteen minutes writing its opening scene and then put it away, and pick it up again at a later time and spend fifteen minutes expanding the opening scene or writing a different scene... and I just go on that way until I have finished what I call a "brute force rough draft." [Which means that there'll be places where, instead of four polished pages of prose, there's a thing in square brackets that says something like "Insert a scene here that will plausibly get Eleanor so distracted that she forgets to turn off the oven." When I get stuck for the details of a scene, I don't waste time struggling with it; I write a note like that and go on with the brute force rough draft, which is my most urgent goal. And I can of course at any time pick up a folder and work for fifteen minutes on one of those things in square brackets.]
Once that rough draft is finished, I start over, but now I'm revising -- and revising can always be done in fifteen-minute snippets. As long as I'm careful to put a date on every page I write -- so I don't get the various versions mixed up -- I can always work fifteen minutes and then put the work away, and then pick it up again later.
I know people who can write their books this way and just leave them on the computer; I can't do that. I have to have a physical object or the book isn't real to me. I have to print out my drafts and store them in a three-ring binder so that I can judge the size and heft of everything. I can look at a book-in-a-binder and sort of bounce it in my hands and realize that it needs to have a new chapter added between Chapter 7 and Chapter 8. I can't explain how I do that, but I know that if the book is only inside my computer I can't make that sort of judgment.
If I'm doing a nonfiction book instead of a novel, I'm more likely to have 18 chapters instead of 25 -- so, fewer file folders. If I'm doing a short story or an article, I work in "sections," each with its own folder, and I may not need more than three or four folders .... never more than ten. If I'm doing a poem, I may have only one folder. But I work the same way in every case.
And that's how I do it. I could never, never have written all those books while I got a Ph.D. and/or worked one full-time job and two or three part-time jobs and kept house and took care of my kids [and ate, and slept] if I hadn't learned to do it that way.