Test Run - Fast Draft

[rj_anderson]

I just wrote 1,119 words in 30 minutes.

...

Wow.

Mind you, what I've written will need plenty of revision to be any use. But I'm amazed and delighted to realize that the idea of doing Touching Indigo as a Fast Draft -- 5000 words a day for 14 days, adding up to 70,000 words at the end of two weeks -- is by no means as ridiculous as I'd thought.

I've been playing with the idea of Fast Drafting ever since I first heard about it, because I've been wrestling with the tendency to fiddle endlessly with my prose instead of making forward progress, and it seems to me that having a crazy-go-nuts quota like this might be the best way to break the habit. If I can teach myself to just get words on the page for the first draft and leave the fussing about finding just the right words and the perfect sentence rhythm for the second... I think that would be a big step forward, for me.

So. Here are my goals, which I am stating here for posterity and in the hopes of shaming myself into actually completing them:

1. To have a rough working outline for Indigo no later than March 31st.
2. To start Fast Drafting the novel no later than April 2nd.
3. To complete the first draft by no later than April 20th (giving myself Sundays off, and three extra days in case it runs over 70,000 words -- which it probably will)

This is either going to be the most fun I've ever had writing a book in my life or the stupidest thing I've ever done. Stay tuned!

Comments

[alawston.livejournal.com]

My new method is to write my first draft as fast as I can longhand. It's a personal thing, I don't like crossing things out and making my lovely page of handwriting look messy, so instead I just press on. But it's that bit slower than typing, so the prose that emerges tends to be just that smidgen more fully formed.

[olugbemisola.livejournal.com]

sounds good! i'll have to give fast drafting a try. i get stuck revising as soon as i write a few words down.