Last week, O'Abby gave the advice of writing a scene you're excited about when you get stuck writing the manuscript in chronological order. I thought, okay, maybe that's good advice for someone, but I can't do that! How could I possibly skip ahead and just abandon my characters here in this scene? It was a concept that went completely against the writing instincts I've worked so hard to develop as a safeguard against returning to the habits of my early writing days when I used to just write random scenes and then try to stitch them together with bad middle-bits.
Believe me, it was a Cthulhu-cursed mess.
But the thing is, now I'm An AdultTM and I know how to make an outline, so I know where my story is going. I have indeed been struggling to meet my daily word count goal, and I figured I could use some new motivation to keep me going. So a few days ago, when I hit my 2K for the day, I stopped in the middle of a scene that was being particularly annoying and skipped ahead to write something else. It ripped me apart, but I did it.
And you know what? It really worked!
I only wrote a couple of paragraphs, and I'm not sure where they go in this manuscript, but I know they belong somewhere in this story. It was information that had been kicking around in my brain, and now it's finally in the manuscript, even if its place is only temporary. And the best part was that I walked away from my laptop on a good note. I was proud of having written more than my goal daily word count, and it felt good to end on a scene that I was pleased with. So now, every day, if the writing isn't going as well as I'd like, I just make a point to hit my word count and then I reward myself with a scene I'm excited to write. It's helping me meet my NaNo goal faster, and it's keeping me from burning out.
So thanks, O'Abby!
1 comment:
I have a few of those random scenes on "notecards" (text files, mostly) that belong in various WIP.
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