Getting my mind around getting it done

I am a slow writer.  At least, I think I am.

I can write quickly if I must.  I usually write 20 page research papers in under 36 hours.  Okay, sometimes I go over deadline and it's 72 hours.  Someone once told me that a good formula was an hour a page plus one to proof read at the end.  Though that formula wasn't true when I was in college, it has been for the master's program.

But for fiction?  I churned out a story, 3000 words, start to finish in about seven hours one night at Odyssey last summer.  It had some problems, but it also had a beginning, middle, and end.  Then I let my subconcious tackle the edits and problems of that story for six months, finally sitting down to redraft.  I've been redrafting for the past 30 days.

I'll get stuck.  I'll take a bunch of notes.  I'll find something else to do (most likely not writing). Then the perfect phrasing or situation to get me unstuck bubbles up in my mind the next day.

It's taking forever.

And I'm looking for ways to make it happen quicker.  There has to be something better than a sentence or single idea bubbling up per day.  Come on, lots of bubbles.  Let's think carbonation here.

It's not just the revisions (although they're worse than anything else).  I've been putting off first drafts as well.  So I started reading Eat That Frog! a self-help book about time management.  Although, as theLiz told me, reading a book about how to not procrastinate sounds like a great form of procrastination.

Just read this interview with Julie Duffy of StoryADay.  It is indeed a month long write-a-story-each-day challenge.  Sounds intense.  Sounds like the pulp writers of yesteryear (but hold that though, it's tomorrow's post).  Sounds like something I'd really like to do.  Sounds like my sloooooooowness would either get kicked out or get me kicked out.  Hmm.

Duffy's advice:

Finish. Finish every story. Even if it's dragging and you hate it, learning how to work through that and get to to the good bit is all part of the craft. Just starting stories will never get you anywhere. Learning how to craft your ideas into finished stories is what it's all about.

I need to get over the starting and get on to the doing and the sticking.  Sticking with the doing.

Bestselling author Jenny Crusie writes:

There is a time before I begin a book that I panic. I can’t remember how I did it before, the first fifteen books must have been flukes, I don’t know everything that’s going to happen in the story, I don’t understand the characters, I’m a fake, the book is going to be a disaster, and my career is over. The fact that I do this before every book is not a comfort.

Then she found god collaging.

Hmm. Thanks -- tempting -- but no.  I'm already waist-deep in unfinished arts-n-crafts projects, I really don't need another excuse to buy and/or collect more of that stuff.  Although the whole panic notion does put me in mind of this absolutely spot on cartoon.

Is it really as simple as Ann Aguirre makes it out to be?  Find a group of people who want to write five thousand words a day and then you all write five thousand words a day?  She makes caveats that finding the right group of people is important -- and lordy do I know that: those groups where we all slacked off and secretly rejoiced that we'd failed together instead of failed alone, yeah, those groups weren't very helpful.  But she's big on there being no magic in the system.  There's no magic time, no magic aura, the stars do not align.  She just goes.  Does.  Is.

I guess I just need to go. Do. Be.  Get off my stupid starting block and keep going without tripping on it.  Of course, Aguirre's method is for the first draft, not the revisions.

Does your style slant toward slow or fast?  Slow and steady or (worse) slow and sporadic?

What processes and advice have worked for you?

On Process: Writing

I'm on deadline. Again. This one is an editing/revision deadline. Earlier in the month I went crazy over a workshop deadline because I didn't have a story finished and nothing I'd started wanted to let me finish it ... so I started over from scratch.

My writing process is usually quite organic. When I'm on a deadline it becomes a matter of manic work and some grocery store preparation. I lug home a brown bag full of "study food" which, for me, spells comfort and concentration. Gummy bears, sunflower seeds, coffee (of course), chocolate covered raisins, apples and peanut butter**, and liters and liters of Diet Dr. Pepper.

Everything else I can negotiate on -- location, atmosphere, the cleanliness of the kitchen, the flavor of the coffee, even which snack foods are purchased -- but the Diet Dr. Pepper is nonnegotiable.

What is your writing process? Is it an activity or a place, or is it a collection of goods?

**Ten points to the person who posts the name of the TV show whose characters work hard fueled by apples and peanut butter. (My dad got this right away so it's not that obscure, but I will hint that the show is off the air now.)

First Drafts and Death Sprials

I don't like showing first drafts to people. As Anne Lamott says, first drafts are by definition shitty. But even more than that I am almost always unable to bear showing an unfinished first draft to someone. I have to have taken the time to have thought out the whole story or the response will destroy my drive to finish writing the project. This has less to do with the writing being bad (which it always is in a first draft) and more to do with my thought process being both incomplete and interrupted.

Once I'm done thinking things through you can tell my writing is shit. In fact at that point I welcome such a comment. But if you fuck with my thought process. When I'm still sorting things out and reasoning my way through the problem I'm gonna go ape shit.

Or worse: I'm gonna give up.

On Friday I started to death spiral. It was all related to my current project. I started doubting what I'd reasoned so far in terms of the early plot. And then I doubted my storytelling strategy for that section. I started rewriting it. Then I saw the shittiness of the section before and started doubting it. Then I had to walk away. The doubt percolated. And all it took was a few innocuous questions from a well meaning person and I went into full panic mode.

This projects not good enough! I'm not good enough! I'm doomed! Why can't I finish a damn novel!

It took several very morose hours to break myself out of that spiral. I'm doing okay now but the doubt monster is there lurking close to the surface.

I realized that my goal for this weekend needs to be to have fun with this first draft. Part of my problem is that I'm being very serious about the whole thing and that's killing it for me. I'll be serious later when things aren't so nebulous.

I never thought I'd quote Nora Roberts, but I'm gonna quote Nora Roberts:

Honey, it’s always crap. Every book I write is crap. It’s my job to fix the crap afterward.

How do you deal with your first drafts?