Joely Sue Burkhart

I had a nice long summary all typed up–and my stupid laptop died.  Grrr.  So this may not have as much detail as I originally planned.

Statistics:

1. 228 pages
2. 11 days
3. 20.7 pages average per day
4. lowest number of pages in one day:  10 (last Saturday)
5. greatest number of pages in one day:  27 (day 2)
6. average hours spent writing each day:  3 hours
7. typical writing schedule:  4:30 a.m. - 6:30 a.m.; 9:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

Tactics for Success

1. Plot board — huge!  I never had to stop and think where to go next.
2. Character arc — huge!  I knew the characters’ fears, motivations, etc. which helped drive the plot
3. Writing first thing in the morning to accomplish the bulk of the work FIRST.  Otherwise, I would have been too tired after a few days.
4. Accountability:  having someone to check up on me, knowing you guys would be reading the next day, imagining how sheepish I’d feel to admit “Oh, I just slept in today.”  So I got up instead.
5. NO INTERNAL EDITOR.  No research, no stopping, no struggling with word choice.  Make a note, move on.
6. No re-reading.  I always thought I needed to read the last few pages to get into “the flow.”  This is unnecessary in Fast Draft.  The flow is THERE, all the time.  Just go!

Things that didn’t work so great:

1. I started with Chapter breaks, but quickly lost count.  Next time, I’ll only do scene (#) breaks.
2. I didn’t refer to my character list, and I forgot some of the minor names.  Oh, well, that’s easy to change!
3. The whole goal is to immerse yourself in the story.  Well, I did that–perhaps too well.  More comments on this below.
4. Dieting was pretty tough–if not impossible.  Maybe it was the early hours, or the long hours, or simply the smoking laptop keys… but I was ravenous.  I wanted different foods–proteins like eggs, cheese, peanut butter–than my diet foods.  Next time, I need to plan a little better with some food choices readily available that maybe aren’t “diet” but least somewhat healthy.

I will definitely do Fast Draft again.  It reminded me of the simple joy of writing.  The rush of finishing.  The magic of exploration.  It was hard, yes.  I got extremely tired.  The world of my story sucked me down, rolled me to the bottom of the ocean, and I did not want to do anything else.  It was very hard to stop, go to work, remember to pick up the kids from school, decide what to fix for dinner.  Simple things I do everyday, but my brain just couldn’t hold it all.

Quite honestly, I could have written the whole thing in a week.  Maybe less.  I deliberately had to distract myself, or I would have been utterly consumed.  With a EDJ (Evil Day Job) and family obligations, I just couldn’t let that happen.  I am obsessive compulsive anyway, and Fast Draft encourages you to concentrate utterly on the story.  I actually read both Patricia Briggs books in the evenings instead of using them for rewards–I needed to occupy my brain with something else, anything else.  Of course the monsters are natural distractions, too.   

Seriously, though, I really had to work at letting go for awhile.  Turning it off before I overloaded.  If I’d done a little better at balance, and getting my exercise, then my back, neck, and shoulders likely wouldn’t be screaming the last few days.

And OH, the gallons of coffee I consumed!  I am not kidding.  Next time, I think I’ll track how many cups of coffee I drink.  It will be… shocking.

So what’s my plan now?  I’m going to go through a lecture packet from Margie Lawson on Empowering Character Emotions.  Candy Havens is going to start a Revision Hell workshop toward the end of the month.  Meanwhile, I’m going to do some reading for pleasure and study, and get more submissions out the door.  I need to complete some research and brainstorming for a possible S&S22 story.  Then next month, I’ll begin serious revisions.

Oh, and Jess?  RHP is not the title.  It’s the concept, and it’s secret.  Only two people know what it stands for.  I have no idea what the title is, yet, which is pretty unusual for me.  Hopefully I’ll come up with something in revision. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who cheered me on.  You made a huge difference and played a great part in my success!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Fast Draft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.