The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 19 November 2007

Quoting Ben:

[clip]
> How does one handle the enormous word counts?
[snip]

Hi, Ben.

I've been thinking about that question of how to handle lots of words.

I kind of think the real answer might be like the one about how to eat an elephant - one bite at a time. So then the question is how do you divvy up the pile?

There's some different answers to that one, and like Kipling's ways to sing the tribal lays, they are all right. So look for what works for you. Plenty of people find a deadline, a quota, a goal of some kind works for them. Show them the goal and stand back, because they're off and running. That's more or less what the nanowrimo challenge does unless you add a bit to it.

There are also plenty of people who are more regular nibblers. They may not be too comfortable with a huge overhanging goal, but ask them to do a short story every week, an exercise on Fridays, or some other regular task, and they'll get it out week after week without missing. Set up a blog or website to collect that stuff and before you know it, they've got a respectable pile of stuff.

Sometimes you can take one of these and translate it into the other. That's really why I think it's important to take the 50K in a month and look at it as 12.5K a week or a mere 1,666 words a day. They may be mathematically identical, but in terms of emotional commitment, they are often very different.

Or toss in the weekend breaks or whatever makes it fit your life. Or you may be more comfortable with a number of hours, a list of scenes or topics, or some other way of carving that old elephant into bites that fit your dentures. When I teach project management, I usually point out that one of the most important measures of a work breakdown structure is whether it makes sense to you, and that's really what we're talking about. Take one skewer of grilled meat a day, and that oliphaunt doesn't look nearly as scary!

In fact, I've recently pulled this trick on a student here who is writing a paper. See, he told me that the paper is due on February 7, so there was lots of time. I asked him to make a list of the steps that he needed to go through to have the paper ready. He looked a little puzzled, but fairly quickly had a list of nine or 10 things. And I suggested that we start at the deadline and work our way back. So final review by the companies might take - oh, say two weeks. And this would take a week or so. Oh, let's skip the New Year season, since that's when everyone will disappear. And . . . suddenly we were looking at needing to start last week in order to get the paper done in time (and we don't have slack in that schedule yet - I think we're going to be in trouble). Anyway, having those intermediate little inch-pebbles helps quite a few of us keep on track.

There's also a group of folks who do a fine job of planning, Might be note cards, character sheets, or one of the design-a-story programs, but they work through their outline/design in some detail first then get into filling out the structure they have drawn up.

I've recently seen Lois McMaster Bujold describing her approach. She says she keeps an outline from the beginning but it is very sketchy, and as she writes, she also fills in the outline and modifies it. She said she probably has as many words in the final outline as in the novel.

Incidentally, I think an important piece is learning how to change up. For example, I am way too likely to get stuck in the research part of articles I am writing - I love digging through the literature and doing little summary papers. I really have to cut myself off and go back to writing the paper, putting together a structure, filling it in, and then smoothing out the whole thing. I have trouble cutting out the extra neat stuff that is really irrelevant, too. Non sequitur is my Achilles heel. I have learned, to some extent, the usefulness of changing formats. Written text, power point slides, and for real brainstorming, I like a big white board. Shifting back and forth when working can help you see the big picture and all those little details, too.

(I also keep side notes, both on paper and in files, of those extra ideas and stuff. Somehow jotting those down gives me the freedom to set them aside for now, instead of having them chew up my attention. And sometimes I even remember later to look at them. Good fodder for quick little followup pieces!)

I guess what I'm saying is to start with an approach that feels comfortable for you, whether that's free writing or carefully laid out writing, but don't be afraid to shift gears as you go along. Maybe you find yourself a bit off track and need to do some surveying and map work before the next step, or maybe you hit an inspiration and want to take off and write while the words are flowing - do it!

Sorry, this isn't a nicely bundled short answer. I'm not sure there is a short answer. Maybe find a hint over in that song about "life's a dance that you learn as you go, as" and writing, the reflection of life in an inky pool, well,
it takes a dash of that spirit too?

Hope something in here helps.

Original posting: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 11:19:10 EST

At 07:57 AM 3/5/98 -0500, Faith wrote:
:)
:) What do you do when it's the day before you were supposed to have written
:) something (*anything*), and you still haven't written a word?
:)

Somewhat too late to solve this time, but perhaps these will help:

"quick" organizers:

1. Try taking the question or problem apart. Then put it back together, along with some information. Often this will be enough to do the job.

2. Take whatever information you may have about the answer or response, and build an answer based on the natural "partitions" or "areas" of the information. I.e., there is some kind of structure to the information--talk about that structure. Put it into a nice, easily remembered metaphor/analogy. Point out the areas that aren't included, or the ones that haven't been as thoroughly explored as others.

3. Tell 'em what you are going to tell them, tell it to 'em, then tell 'em what you told them. I often write the middle (in chunks, without much attention to order, with a computer). Then write an intro: I'm going to talk about 1, 2, 3... Arrange the points to make sense, then rearrange the middle blocks (and remove the extra pieces that usually collect when freewriting--I find it marginally easier to cut those golden phrases that really don't belong in this piece if I put them in a "bits" file for later use. Of course, I have "bits" files everywhere that will never be used, but the mental trick works). Now, write a closing that explains the important point(s) you have just made.

4. Try building a set of relations. E.g., what does this (whatever the topic or problem is) mean for me, my family, my community, my nation, the world? Or what did it mean in the past, mean now, and will it mean in the future? This can be a very nice way to structure your response...

5. Build a set of questions about the topic, problem, etc. What would you like to know about it? What would your friends like to know about it? How about your reader(s)--what should they know about it? What's interesting about it? What's boring?

"been there, done that, don't want to keep doing it":

6. Learn the lesson and start planning ahead next time. If you can easily write 1,000 words a day, a 5,000 word paper will probably take at least 10 days to write (allowing for the inevitable slippage, interruptions, and other problems). Depending on what else is going on, you may want to start working on it even earlier, instead of waiting for the last possible minute to begin.

Setting yourself little "deadlines" within the larger period may seem silly, but it really does work--and builds some good skills/practices for bigger jobs (*like that novel--200,000 words? Say 100 days at 2,000 words per day, plus editing/rewrite time. Work out the "little deadlines" along the way and celebrate reaching them--and the "big deadline" will be easy!*).

Perhaps others will contribute their "instant organizers" and ways to avoid getting stuck in "deadline panics?" Although, looking around MIT, there is a certain fascination among the students with the adrenaline rush of "last minute crises" (even when self-induced).

hope this helps