As if
Great advice over on the The Women On Writing Blog.
Even though I in no way would attempt to write a book in 30 days, the main idea here is to go forward “as if.” With every new thought and change and edit just forge ahead. Don’t go back to *find and replace* just make a note and move on. Don’t rearrange or re-establish anything, just put a reminder in your notes or in track changes and keep writing.
I tend to write and rewrite at the same time and so it takes me longer to get from A to Z than some people. But, I may spend less time on my second go-round, but I still spend some. So I’m going to give this method a whirl and see if it works for me. I won’t think about page 10 if page 40 has a change that will impact page 9 — yet that’s what I’ve done in the past. Made a decision and then backtracked to make everything consistent. Now I’ll just keep going…as if the changes were already made. Might make reviewing and editing more complicated, we’ll see.
What’s the method to your madness of moving forward?
Full speed ahead is the only way. To backtrack, try to fix as I go, worrying about what I wrote in a chapter way back at the beginning, knowing I’ve left a character not fully developed, etc. will put me in a pit of quicksand. The forward motion and gagged & bound self-editor gets me to the end. Then, and only then, can I go back in and revise, weed, fertilize, prune. And that keeps me from getting discouraged.
I write a little, edit it. Write a little more, edit it. If it’s a book, I do the beginning of each chapter, because I’ve written the entire story in my head. Then I commence the fleshing out which is write a little, edit it. I’ve got this obsessive compulsive thing about moving forward when I know there are mistakes behind me. It’s like pictures that aren’t straight or a missing button. It drives me to utter and absolute distraction.
I do pre-writing work: character development, outline and much research. I find the research in particular gives me much fuel to keep moving forward, almost a framework to work within, without too much backtracking.