I’m a writer who’s just starting out. I’ve only been writing for about two years off and on and never really been serious about it or gone anywhere with it until recently.

So for now I’m figuring out how to complete a first draft and how to actually put a story together as well how how to link events and senquence them and all that basic story writing stuff. Before now I’ve never really written story stuff just various eassys and research papers for school.

You’re stuff on rewriting will be extremely useful to me once I finally get there as well as any other advice for writing that you have around your blog.

I’m sure I could probably use a writing group myself considering I’m just starting out writing but I have no idea where to start looking really. So if you happen to have one and want to contact me feel free to at hawk13_99@hotmail.com.

eyes glance…good.
had head – just.
look! mouth! (open, close).
nod.
raise eyebrow (raise, lift)
really seem!
shrug, sigh… slowly smile. so still…
stood suddenly!
then… very…
walk!!

*(“we have only the index, the book itself no longer exists. From this remnant, arranged according only to arbitrariness of the alphabet, one can still discern the outlines of the story of a man who, like his biography, has been expunged from history.” – http://elab.eserver.org/hfl0093.html )

Thanks! Great hack!

Makes me wonder if I should be protecting those directories, though…

*creeping paranoia*

In college I spent several years doing improv, and the training actually helped with my momentum. “The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.” Every scene went from beginning to end without a pause and you often discovered things in the course of a scene that you never would have if you had the opportunity to go back and fix things. A first draft is much like improv; most scenes need to go forward and be completed. Only a few games feature “repeats” of the action where things can be improved.

Minor rewrites don’t kill your momentum. Major rewrites are sometimes necessary— if you’ve painted yourself into a corner, but going back can get you out, it’s good. And if you can rewrite and still complete, don’t sweat it.

Most of us, though, will have to save rewriting for the end lest we run out of steam before the project is complete.

and so are siamese cats. just so you know.

this is pure gold and i’m going to circulate the link to everybody i know involved in writing/publishing, link it via our website… etc.

thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

your point about working too hard on the good sentences only to find they don’t belong in the story is very definitely something i need to take note of. i have a terrible tendency to do this, and end up keeping all sorts of earlier drafts because i think they have some lovely but inapplicable bits in them. and i never actually go through and keep or make use of any of these “pearls”. how much better to only craft them when i really, really need to!

btw, most people (including me) don’t protect the directory listing on their blogs, so when curious about someone’s plugins, just try adding
/wp-content/plugins/
to the blog home URL.

Anyway, great post, Justine, much appreciated!

One question on rewriting, about _when_ you rewrite. I’ve read things which say you shouldn’t mix writing and rewriting. Write it all first, then rewrite it. I can understand that ‘creative’ and ‘analytical’ hats can be conflicting and that sometimes one has to just write crap first before improving upon it (which is difficult if you’re thinking critically), but I generally find I bounce back and forth between rewriting previous sections and writing more. Is this such a terrible thing to do?

those sorts of exercises have stood me well in the years since. Strangely enough, they mostly helped me with my nonfiction college essays, particularly the philosophy papers. But of course they are best applied to fiction— try a few tricks such as those or the ones listed in the main post.

Thanks for all the rest too–the despair part is especially motivating.

Great post, lots of good stuff. I do some of what you noted already, but you’ve given a lot of food for thought here.

A couple of comments:
“Time saved by writing the first draft fast: negative six weeks.”
Ah, but. I often blitz through sections of first drafts, if the story is flowing well and I’m willing my fingers to keep up with my imagination. You’re right, it takes me longer to fix, but that’s often the most inspired writing.

And:
“I saw a tree. I touched the tree. I could tell from touching it that it was a good tree. I felt the tree speaking to me but I could not tell what it was saying. I was hurt by the tree when it exploded because I touched it. I was angry at the tree.”

If only Hemingway had a chance to read you’re advice about this. It would have saved me a lot of tedium in high school English class.

How much of that would your editor comment on and how much of that is just personal preference?