So, I am the sort of person who works best when others are around, even if I’m not talking to them. When left unsupervised, I have a tendency to procrastinate horribly unless I’m going to have to perform shortly with a hard deadline (this is why teaching works well for me–with literal bells ringing to tell me what to do next–and writing novels is a struggle, even though I really enjoy writing!).
So, to this end, I’ve set up a weekly “writing date” with a long-distance friend. Unfortunately, so far we have made zero progress in actual writing during these writing dates. We are, however, 142,065 words in (that is way, WAY too many words, in case you are wondering, because we are not writing epic fantasy).
We also wrote those words appx. a million years ago (tracking spreadsheet not updated since January 2014, so actually about 20 months and it only FEELS like a million years).
So it seems like, in order to make this novel work, we need to put on our Revision Hats and get elbow-deep in the guts of this thing… but we didn’t write it in order, so despite having way too much material, we also don’t really have a middle or end (or very good beginning, to be perfectly honest).
I am as good at revisions as Derek Zoolander is at mining. (Which is to say: I am not at all good at revisions.)
So, having weekly writing dates is a good start on accountability… but what I really need is a PLAN. I’m tempted to put all of what we’ve done so far into Scrivener, but that feels like “productive procrastination,” aka a way to pretend that the off-task work I’m doing is secretly very important…
Well, on the plus side, at least during my Writing Date I got this blog post written…?
Yeah, for you! I hope to ‘read’ something one of these days… Monday…
MONDAY! 😀
I fell asleep last night thinking about how badly the entire opening needs to be restructured. On the plus side, the ending doesn’t need restructuring (uh, because it isn’t written yet… silver linings???)