This past week was the first of a seven-week sprint to a first draft of the new novel. An acronym for the working title is TPS, so I’m sure many of you will sympathize with my desire to call these blog posts “TPS reports” (and, hence, why you are seeing this on a Saturday).
I’ve set a fairly ambitious goal for myself on this project: 2,000 words per day. That’s eight, typed, double-spaced pages. At six days a week, if I stay on schedule, I will have an 80,000-word draft in just under seven weeks. It’s also possible that I will have angry neighbors. The weather in central PA is still gorgeous, and most days are open-window days. My neighbors are old enough to know what that sound is they’re hearing, but there’s no telling whether it fills them with wonder or annoys the shit out of them.
For all but one day this week I was able to sit my butt in the chair and work more or less uninterrupted. When I have good days like that, I usually complete the 2,000 words in two and half to three hours. Given the plan, that is half a chapter every day, so each week I get into a sort of day to day breathing routine: open the chapter, close the chapter. Open the chapter, close the chapter. Open the chapter, close the chapter. And then a brief rest before I start again on Monday.
There was that one bad day, though. Wednesday. Fuck Wednesday. I eventually got my words in, but man they did not want to come out. But no, you know what, that’s not right. The problem was that on Wednesday the voices were too loud. Not the creative voices, the daemon, but the critical voices. The voices that cut and draw blood in the form of shame. The voices that very, very convincingly argue that there’s really no point in writing, because it’s all crap. The story doesn’t hang. I don’t know enough about these people or these events to write a single word, so maybe I just ought to stop until I can figure it out.
Nope. Not having it. 2,000 words or bust. I’ll know what I’m doing after I’ve done it.
Some of the writers reading this might find the numbers incredible, because some writers are having a solid writing day when they get out 50 or 100 or 200 words. On that score, let me assure you that I am a filthy, disgusting swooper. Kurt Vonnegut divided writers into swoopers and bashers.
“Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.” –Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
Vonnegut also ventures that most men are bashers and most women swoopers. Whatever, bruh. This is how I get shit done, and though I have not always embraced it, it has ever been thus. These drafts are so unwieldy and amorphous that it is completely fair game for me to write something like, “blah blah blah, and then the magic happens.” Laughable. But I keep on typing. When that draft is done and I come back to revise, I will have a much better idea about what “blah blah blah” means and to what in fact “the magic” refers. Sometimes I just don’t know, but I do know that the magic needs to be there. You expect the magic. You’ve come for the magic. It’s my job to deliver.
Now I know that this is how I work, but I still try to optimize. For instance, I will work on the concept of a script or book for months, building characters and getting a sense of the plot, before I ever actually sit down to write any prose. Normally, I will have something that looks like a plot outline, but rarely is it much more than a single sentence per chapter. It’s not a lot to go on, but it’s usually enough. When I do sit down, it’s like I am taking the idea of a car out for a drive. It generally doesn’t handle well; the steering may not even be connected to the wheels at all. And yet, I know how to drive, and I know (more or less) where I want to go. So sitting down and churning out 2,000 words inspired by a single sentence is both terrifying and freeing. I can kinda write anything. Why not? Why do this at all if I can’t just write whatever the hell I want sometimes? And yet, eventually, it does all need to come together and make sense (hopefully in an entertaining and/or fascinating way) to someone other than me.
But for this first draft? SWOOOOOOOP! SWOOOOOOOP! You get 2,000 words! You get 2,000 words! Everyone gets 2,000 words! Mostly because I have zero shame about each and every one of those words. Total shitbag, this draft. Couldn’t pass a PT test to save its life.
The truth is, I need this draft in order to know what I have to put in it and what I have to take out. I am, for whatever reason, not a writer who can figure all of this out cleanly before I sit down to write. If there is a way to cut that knot, I have not seen it for myself yet. I need to create the lump of clay. The blank page is not my lump of clay. The blank page is the workbench that doesn’t have any sculpting materials on it yet whatsoever.
Every 2,000 words is another lump of clay.
Onward.
