Slow Down

Hello.

I'm mostly feeling better now, but not trusting myself to eat anything but crackers or drink anything but Ginger ale or Sprite.

Anyway, this blog post is brought to you by Wasteland Nomad, an interesting person, who, with one tweet, inspired me.

The tweet was as follows,

"Sometimes physically writing a story can slow you down and let you see things clearer. At least to my crazy brain anyway."

Which made me think.

Can You Write Too Quickly?

Unless it is during NaNoWriMo, or another WriMo, the answer is, surprisingly, yes.

NaNoWriMo is all about writing quantity over quality, and that's great when the goal is to just get something written, but outside of NaNoWriMo?

If you're working to a deadline, you want to write quickly, but not so quickly that you lose sight of where you wanted to go. Working with a go, go, go attitude is great and all, but too much of that, and you become derailed. Become derailed and we can become unmotivated. You may look back at what you've written and go, it's crap. Well, yeah. That's because you weren't paying attention to what you were writing.

How can we keep from writing too quickly?

Sometimes, we just need to take a step back.

If you feel you are becoming lost in your story/novel/post/fanfic or you've written yourself into a hole, take a step back. Look at it as if for the first time, take note of what you want to happen later, or how you want the scene/novel/fanfic to end, and try to figure out what happens in the meantime.

Even as a pantser, I find taking a look at it this way helps. With my current WIP, Mortality, I wrote out the main plot points from where I am to the end, and have started figuring out what happens between now and each point.

It's making the writing itself flow much smoother. I don't plan to the last detail, I leave my characters a lot of leeway, and you should to.

Can You Write Too Slowly?

Most definitely yes. This is the other side of the same coin. 

It's great to know the specifics of what's happening and going on in your novel/scene/fanfic, but while you're writing don't worry about that. If you do worry too much about who's doing what, what's taking place elsewhere or how this effects the future or how the past affected this scene now, you're going to be so wrapped up in the past/future of your novel that writing RIGHT NOW, is going to be downright impossible. 

How do we keep from getting bogged down?

Well, there are many ways you could do this. 

For one, stop worrying. If it's a first draft, which is really all this post pertains to, there is so much editing going to be done that really, worrying now is a time waster, and nothing more. 

If you can't help but go back and reread what you've written (a BIG no-no, especially during WriMo's) the moment you open the file, turn the font color for everything previous, white. Or whatever background color you choose. 

Use WriteOrDie. (Really, it's a life saver). Especially on Kamikaze mode. 

Well, that's all I have for today darlings. 

Stay inspired,

Cheyenne

Food for thought

Do you write too quickly? How do you slow down?

Do you write too slowly? How do you speed up?