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Creative recharge time
Mar. 29th, 2012 03:34 pmIn the last ten days, I've written just about 24,000 words on the new novel, bringing me close to 90,000 words total. If I could keep up this level of writing speed, I could do a full-sized novel in just about 6 weeks.
But I can't, and by now, I think I've figured out why I have these boom and bust cycles as I'm writing, where I start slowing down and finding it more of a slog: I need creative recharge time. I can fly along for awhile, pre-writing scenes in my head faster than I can get them on paper, knowing exactly what is going to happen next. And then my brain starts to feel like an overworked muscle -- the process of putting words on paper gets a lot harder, I'm easily distracted, I don't know what's going to happen next, writing becomes an uphill slog through mud. I need to stop for awhile, let events shake themselves out in my head, and get a mental picture of how the next 20,000 words are going to go. At this point, I still have to write the entire climax -- the "big battle" -- plus a couple chapters of pivotal plot stuff at an earlier point in the novel that I skipped because there was a major "getting from A to B" thing that I couldn't figure out. I'm making an educated guess that I have between 15,000 and 20,000 words of novel yet to go. But before I write that, I have to stop for a bit.
( Talking about my creative process )
ETA: I just realized this is why I never could finish NaNo! I loved those novels, and I was able to complete them later on (well, I finished one; the other stalled out on a plot conundrum at about 60,000 words). And I always started NaNo doing fabulous, sailing through the word counts and then some, usually hitting 10-20,000 words in the first week. But then I'd hit a wall between one and two weeks in. And this is why. I just can't keep up that level of writing activity for a month, and I can't rein myself in enough not to burn out. I'm a sprinter, not a jogger. *g*
But I can't, and by now, I think I've figured out why I have these boom and bust cycles as I'm writing, where I start slowing down and finding it more of a slog: I need creative recharge time. I can fly along for awhile, pre-writing scenes in my head faster than I can get them on paper, knowing exactly what is going to happen next. And then my brain starts to feel like an overworked muscle -- the process of putting words on paper gets a lot harder, I'm easily distracted, I don't know what's going to happen next, writing becomes an uphill slog through mud. I need to stop for awhile, let events shake themselves out in my head, and get a mental picture of how the next 20,000 words are going to go. At this point, I still have to write the entire climax -- the "big battle" -- plus a couple chapters of pivotal plot stuff at an earlier point in the novel that I skipped because there was a major "getting from A to B" thing that I couldn't figure out. I'm making an educated guess that I have between 15,000 and 20,000 words of novel yet to go. But before I write that, I have to stop for a bit.
( Talking about my creative process )
ETA: I just realized this is why I never could finish NaNo! I loved those novels, and I was able to complete them later on (well, I finished one; the other stalled out on a plot conundrum at about 60,000 words). And I always started NaNo doing fabulous, sailing through the word counts and then some, usually hitting 10-20,000 words in the first week. But then I'd hit a wall between one and two weeks in. And this is why. I just can't keep up that level of writing activity for a month, and I can't rein myself in enough not to burn out. I'm a sprinter, not a jogger. *g*