Daily Archives: 4-Nov-11

Writing a little is better than writing nothing

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I was reminded today of one of my favorite writing quotes, by Roger Zelazny.  Simple, practical, and perfect for NaNoWriMo:

I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you’re going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You’re going to say “Oh boy!” and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That’s 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn’t goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I’ve moved as far as I have.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995), Interview, Phlogiston #43 (1995)

Sometimes during NaNo, you just can’t work yourself up into sitting down for the hour and a half, two hours, whatever, to kick out the day’s 1700 words.  But sitting down and doing three sentences, four times? That’s easy, 5-10 minutes each.
And, at worse, if that’s all you do, then you’re a bit behind in the word count, but you kept the momentum going, kept the brain thinking about the story.

Because you can work with WRONG WORDS

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Maureen Johnson does a great post on THE FEAR OF THE FIFTY-THOUSAND. One note:

And 50,000 words, though it seems like an UNGAINLY number, isn’t even as much as you think. It SOUNDS big, but that’s 1,666 words a day. That’s not a huge number. That’s a few emails and a couple of texts. It only seems big because you’ve put an expectation on yourself that you can now THROW AWAY. This is not a text. No one will tase you in the neck if you write the wrong thing, because YOU CANNOT WRITE THE WRONG THING. Give yourself a chance to get it wrong. You’ll get it right later.

Well, 1,667/day is a bit more than a few emails and a couple of texts (even from someone like me, who writes overly long emails at the office), but it is quite doable … especially if you don’t get into a lather about it having to be the perfect 1,667 words.

(I do get into such a lather, but that’s a problem, not an advisable course of action.)

The next step is to write some words. ANY WORDS. Something has to be on the page. It’s totally okay if what goes on that page are the WRONG WORDS, as long as they are SOME WORDS, because you can work with the WRONG WORDS. A lot of what you are doing at the start is blowing some of the crap out of your head and knocking the fear out of the way. You are PUNCHING FEAR IN THE FACE. You’ve already got it on the floor. Now KICK IT. Seriously. KICK IT.

Plus, pictures of cute owls.