Great things happened in the month of November. For those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo and gave it a serious try (win or no win), you know what I mean. I learned a lot about myself during this experience.
- I can write a rough draft in a month — This does not mean I have a clean first draft. As some say, think of it as a really detailed outline. For the most part, that’s what I have. Much of the document is telling. I have a lot of place holders, “he smiled” “she frowned”, which need to be replaced with actions less generic. I don’t think I described any of the settings. I can go on and on, but I think you all get the drift.
- I do well working from an outline — Shadow Cat was by the seat of my pants and had lots of plot holes. It took quite a bit of time trying to find them and patch them. My outline covered all the story arcs for Alley Cat (NaNo WIP), so plot holes weren’t an issue. Whenever I had a change to the storyline, I modified the outline to fit.
- I’m more productive in the evenings when it comes to writing — I wake late in the morning and have tried to write as soon as I get up. Not sure why (mental thing), but my mind tends to wander too much to produce anything of significance. It could easily take me 4 hours to produce 300 words. Around 4-5 pm, my brain starts to nag, “Hey. Are we going to write today? It’s getting sort of late.” Of course with my family coming home, eating dinner and all, I have a difficult answering the call. So usually it’s not until 8 pm that I can sit down and really write. By then I’m so pumped, the creative juices flow like mad.
So what does this mean for me? I’m going to stop wasting my early afternoons with writing and focus on other areas of my life. Reading, critiquing, housework (ugh). This month I’m going to finish my edits/polishes on Shadow Cat. But January, I’m going to pump out another rough draft. Come February when I start working on the second draft of Alley Cat will tell me if rushing a draft is a good idea or not.
That’s all folks. I’m not even going to try to write in the early afternoons. I’m thinking just knowing my productive times is going to make me more efficient all around.