Weekly Blog Entry 7-29-13

Hello and welcome to the first of the blog entries on the new weekly schedule, in which I discuss writing and whatnot. I had meant to tackle this earlier, but unfortunately procrastination reared its ugly head – still working on beating that. Statistics this week: I tackled about ten hours of writing, when all is said and done and I wrote around 16k words, when the dust cleared – around the same as last week. We’re slowly, but surely, building our way up to the top. 

I had originally intended to work on an actual essay type thing, going over my problems with procrastination and writing in general, but that obviously didn’t happen, so instead let’s play catch up. Writing wise, I spent a great deal of time on one project, only for it to collapse under its own weight. I was experimenting with how to plan, and it just kept grown and growing, until it was this enormous monstrosity of a story that had completely focus of what I was originally trying to do. So, I scrapped that but I think I’ve learned things from that – you learn a lot from failure: firstly, keep it simple. 

Narratives might become complex later on – especially for massive multi-volume narratives – but there’s still, I think, an inherent simplicity to be found in them. Those large narratives are made of many smaller narratives that’s built around a central core. 

The second thing that this mess of a project taught me was a possible way to approach my writing from here on out, a four-step method, as it were, involving firstly a stream-of-conscious “plot sketch”, where I work the basic plot of a story, then a more formal synopsis where the plot’s finalized, a breakdown of the plot into chapters – complete with summary and a laundry list of things to include in each chapter, and then finally use that to write the draft itself. You basically have the complete guide. Write it out and checkmark stuff as it’s done. 

I think I might write another blog entry later this week, going into this in a lot more detail. (Read: almost certainly, keep an eye out for that) I’m currently trying it right now on a different project (an older project that needs revamped), and its coming along quite well, though I’m still on the first step

Meditation, as I mentioned I was trying it out and seeing how that went, does seem to work, but I think more important I have a certain drive to what I do. I felt increasingly like I was running on a treadmill – moving, yes, but not moving forward or anywhere at all really. 

So I decided I’m going to try and come up with a goal and accomplish that. My first one? Finish the plot sketch for the current project, ideally by tonight and I can then get moving on the other steps and, with any luck, be writing the actual draft before the week is out. It had something to do with the timers, as I mentioned before. 

While they are helpful for gauging how much time I spend on these sorts of things, I tend to just stop and don’t do anymore after that, because its done. I’m now starting to think in terms of projects – what can I do today to get somewhere and feel like I’m moving forward, instead of ‘Okay, that’s 80 minutes now I’m going to wander on the Internet for a while’. 

I think it helps to think like that, though again it’s a little early to say where its going or what I’m doing yet. Other changes that I have made to my writing routine: I’ve upped the timer from 30 to 40 minutes. I still, of course, require two sessions at a minimum from myself, so now we’re looking at 80 minutes a day instead of a full hour. We’re going to keep building up from there. I also added a time stamp on both the blog entries and the main project, so that I can gauge when I worked on it, and get a feel for my own habits.

Still another (albeit much smaller change) I made was to be more precise in labeling of whatever project I worked on: for example, instead of just saying ‘Project X’, I’ve started putting ‘Project X (Plot Sketch)’, or ‘Project X (Draft – Chapter One)’. Like that. 

I think that’s pretty much all of the news I can think of for today. I will be back later this week, with my promised entry on this four step process I’m developing and am going to use.

Thanks for reading.