I was highly unproductive today. I really had trouble focusing. I spent 15 minutes rereading, finally. Maybe I SHOULD have taken yesterday off.
Category: Writer’s Block & Discipline
Day 9?
I forgot. I’m supposed to take one day a week off, but I didn’t. It was only 15 minutes…
15 Minutes a Day, but how do I score this?
I didn’t ADD words to the story. I carefully looked for mistakes. It wasn’t 15 minutes, but 45. It just takes me longer to see what needs correcting than it takes to put something down.
I am counting it, regardless.
Day 5 of 15 Minutes per Day
I didn’t intend to add those 200-some-odd words today. I only intended to read the story through and put in missing or misspelled words. I shaped the story a little bit more. TOMORROW I will simply proofread and not add.
Day 4:15 Minutes – 271 words today
271 words today. It’s a total of 1053 words, and it is complete. Sort of.
Tomorrow, is my first copyediting. I will probably add and delete like crazy. I just had to set it aside. I have a tendency to see what I think is supposed to be there instead of what actually IS there.
15 minutes today: 229 words
I think that most of these will be keepers. Maybe.
A Big Question: WHY
Over at FICTION UNIVERSITY, Janice Hardy had a guest post by Shanna Swendson. It showed up on the blog on May 25, but I just saw it.
While I thought I had thoroughly considered this question before, I had only given a few seconds attention to this. This only led to a couple of sentence fragments that didn’t lead anywhere. At best, I had given a token effort and received exactly what that effort merited.
ONE KEY QUESTION TO ASK BEFORE YOU START WRITING invited me to reconsider both the question and the answers.
I realized that an abbreviated form of this would also be useful for short story writing. These tidbits deserve respect, too. Knowing the “WHY” can help me reshape the how into something exquisite.
I also realized that it is never too late to take this step. When I get stuck, I could return to it… If I have it already done. If not, it is a perfect exercise to pull me back into the story and the delight I envisioned.
Nifty tool! I can’t wait to use it.