We begin production on Monday, and I’m in the final lap of the writing marathon this week.
Yesterday, I wrote a whole bunch of stuff, until I got to a point where I just had to walk away, because I wasn’t getting anything useful out of my brains. This was really difficult for me to do, because I feel like I need another two weeks of work time between today and Monday.
Today, I went back to the stuff I wrote yesterday, knowing that I had to make lots of cuts for both time and budget. I honestly wasn’t sure where I was going to make those cuts, until I went through and just murdered some things that I liked, but thought didn’t need to be there.
Like magic, the whole piece came together and became something I love. That stuff I cut? I don’t miss it, and I can’t imagine that it was ever there…
…except I can imagine that it was there, because it needed to be there so I could write the stuff that I ended up keeping. It’s sort of like building a scaffolding in Minecraft, to make it possible to build the thing you really want to build, then tearing it down (or burning it down, if you make it out of wood around a stone structure, which is really neat).
So this is another thing that goes into my writer’s toolbox: permission to write and write and just keep writing, and not judge or edit along the way until the draft is finished. Because I may think that something is crap and needs to go, and maybe it is and does, but it needs to be there at this moment so I can find the good stuff.
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Can’t wait to see whatever it is 🙂 Do write & write, editing comes later!
That sounds so tedious. It is what I need to do to my “great american novel” so I can finish that bastard. Good tip for prospective writer. Love all your work, lifelong Nerd fan.
Make the scaffold out of wood and set it on fire! Why didn’t I think of that? I always have used dirt and it takes forever to dig it all down.
Thanks, I’m going to do that from now on. 🙂
It’s called Brain Storming. Write down all ideas and keep going. Once you can’t think of anything else, pick out what is reasonable and implement.
You shared a great perspective on drafting and editing, and it’s perfectly timed for Camp NaNoWriMo. Thanks, Will Wheaton.
The Minecraft scaffolding bit is perfect.
Love reading your posts. The end
Looking forward to the end result!
Non-Judgmental Ninja strikes again
Thank you for this awesome advice. I was just chatting to my nephew about this. I tend to edit myself the whole time, I have to get it perfect first up. This is down to my admin side. Writing contracts, proposals, etc… it has to be right first time. It’s hard to let that go. But I’m working on it.
Glad you’re all fired up! Writing without judgement must be so freeing! Glad you’re in a happy place!
best of luck to u 🙂
When I was at uni I wrote essays. A lot of them.
In one, I wrote a 56 word paragraph that subsequently I edited down to a 12 word sentence.
Thirteen years later I’m still very proud.
I think this method/discovery of yours could be a metaphor for SO many things in life…relationships, college courses, pottery making, jobs….you really could use this to ‘pollyanna’ your life!
Oh yes. This method works really well – excellent advice, Wil. (Cred: I write for a living.)
In my experience, the key is that gap of time. That is, you spew onto the page, then GO AWAY FOR A WHILE, like more than an hour, then come back. You return with a more “settled” idea of what you wanted to do in the first place, and a whole bunch of stuff on screen that suddenly, obviously, doesn’t need to be there.
For me, it takes that mental break in order for that focus to arrive. It’s amazing how quickly things fall together.
Best writing advice I ever had was, ‘Eliminate all weeds. Even a rose is a weed if it’s in a cabbage patch.’
best. Tip. Ever. For anything you need to get done. Just keep on, edit later, and behold your priceless work of art. all of the pieces are necessary, and you create nothing that doesn’t belong here, but in this thing that you now hold in your hands you discovered that the extra pieces you’ve created can and will be used elsewhere. the difficulty is in accepting everything that’s there, knowing something different can form. I find this well done.
First Draft brain-dump that get cleaned up in revisions… or “Fix in Post”. I keep having to remind myself of the same thing. Thanks for the added reminder.
“So this is another thing that goes into my writer’s toolbox: permission to write and write and just keep writing, and not judge or edit along the way until the draft is finished.”
I don’t want to sound judge-y, but isn’t that the traditional way to write? Sometimes I think it’s easy for me to forget that many great works likely came out of a process that didn’t involve editing the work every other minute, because back then editing was hard. Now with our word processing packages we can access anywhere we can edit as we go but lose any idea how much time we waste getting wording better and other minor edits done when those edits might not have been so critical to begin with. I personally have edited Facebook comments for hours only to scrap 90% of what I wrote and rewrote because only after looking everything over did I realize how to succinctly get my intended message across. The other cruft just distracted from my main points.
“Because I may think that something is crap and needs to go, and maybe it is and does, but it needs to be there at this moment so I can find the good stuff.” I like your theory of thinking. But also do think this goes in more ways then just writing. It could be absolutely anything. It’s just figuring out what’s best to keep. Do we figure it out with our mind? Or do we figure it out with our heart?
The scaffolding description is the first description I’ve read about overcoming writer’s block that makes sense to me. I’m paralyzed when I have to write, but I need to finish a huge paper. I’m copying and pasting that paragraph and putting it on my desk top. Thank you!
That’s what happens around here. I kindly ask my internal critic to step out of the way and shut up so I can get that first draft written. Critic can come back later and will be very helpful then, but if he’s there for that first draft, he stifles me down to nothing. The less people looking over your shoulder when you write a first draft, even internal people, the better. 🙂