"7 in 7 Days" wrap up post

[incognitajones]

Positives:

• The first three days were great! I wrote more than 1100 words each day and managed to sketch out several solid scenes.
• I wrote a drabble each day and really enjoyed the process. Finishing & polishing one thing every day (even if it was tiny) helped fulfill my need to see concrete results instead of just an amorphous mass of words.
• I got more-or-less to the end of one WIP. Of course, even as I was writing the climax I could see big problems with it, and immediately went back to note things that should be changed.

Negatives:

• Seven days in a row of intense writing is (probably) too much for me. It's hard to say for certain, since several overlapping minor crises at both work & home on Day 6 were what ended up derailing me for good, but I was definitely already flagging by Day 5.

Things learned:

• I tried a new method of outlining that worked pretty well! For each chapter, I created a new document and put a bulleted list at the top with two points: where the characters were at the beginning and where I wanted them to be at the end. Then I started adding potential stops along the way in between those two points.
• Saying "today I'm going to complete this" really did help to focus my mind. Oddly, the less time I had to work, the easier it was—because it's completely impossible (for me anyway) to write a rough draft of anything in 30 minutes, the goal became just to write whatever I could manage in that timespan. When I had more time to work, I kept being distracted from just getting to the end asap by trying to make it better along the way.
• I think I've discovered why I normally write so slowly: it was physically painful to make myself just keep going after writing something that I knew wasn't quite right. Under normal circumstances I can't write even a zero draft without fixing (at least some of) the obvious problems along the way, which means backtracking & editing, which slows me down.

Future considerations:

• I'd definitely try this again for a shorter period—three days seems about right—during which I was confident that things at work & home would be quieter. Unfortunately, the next time that meets that criteria won't be until late July, unless I can manage to carve out a few days in the second week of June.

Comments

[callioope]

Hooray & congrats for what sounds like a productive week! That outlining method you mentioned sounds super useful.

[brynnmclean]

Congrats on the productive week!!! I used to write weekly drabbles for the LOST fandom and I found the small word count very satisfying as well. That outlining idea sounds really fantastic, I might have to steal that.

[elperian]

Seven days does seem like a lot. Three days every week would also be a lot, but finding time where you can is important! It sounds like a useful exercise :)

[rosaxx50]

I got more-or-less to the end of one WIP

!!!!

Congrats :D

And heh, can always go back to make those changes. But you made it!

And also, in a much more subdued way, congrats on the Raptors making it to the finals? If you still low-key support them.

[incognitajones]

Thanks! I still don't know how much of what I wrote will be usable, but figuring that out is one of the projects for this month.

Definitely still supporting the Raps! (WE THE NORTH)