Got hit by a freight train today. Not literally, but figuratively.
2111 words today, which is BELOW where I needed to be. But there’s more to the story, and it’s interesting.
I started the day patching up the section I mentioned yesterday that leads up to the “big event.” All is good now, but I discovered that I wrote 300 words in one chapter that ultimately weren’t needed after I patched everything together. Those words went into the trash. So I started the day with a 300 word deficit, which I quickly made up during the rest of my looping, so no big deal.
Once I got caught up, I realized that ANOTHER 1000 words I wrote weren’t needed. It was painful to cut them, but necessary because my creative voice took me down a different path. I had to BACK UP, delete what I wrote entirely, and then charge down a different path. This also happened early in the morning.
I had to do all of this before I could get on the bike.
That’s another part of writing into the dark that some people find uncomfortable: cutting words. A lot of people feel like they’ve wasted time and energy. But really, this is part of the creative process. Your creative voice is like a mouse in a maze—it makes twists and turns, but sometimes it has to go back in order to go forward.
To use another analogy, it’s like when your spouse/significant other asks you your opinion on something, you give your opinion, and then they do the opposite of what you suggested…LOL
OTHER ITEMS THAT TOOK MY TIME TODAY
And then I did some other stuff today:
#1: Cleared about a foot of snow from my driveway…love those Iowa winters
#2: Watched Pixar’s Soul (which I highly recommend by the way…one of their best movies in a long time, possibly except for Coco)
#3:I did a podcast interview that will be live sometime in January.
At that point, it was 5PM and I hadn’t gotten on the bike yet. And I had about four more inches of snow to clear out that had fallen since I went out in the morning…
Anyhoo, after more snow clearing and the final batch of looping to get me up to speed, I got on the bike about 8:45PM and went for 30 minutes, took a 5 minute break for water and stretching, and jumped back on for another 30. The result was my word count for the day.
The word counts don’t reflect the words I cut and added as a result of the looping. All you see is 2100 words. But what’s there is a lot stronger.
Now that the “big event” has happened, some crazy stuff has been happening with the story that I can’t even explain. The story took two very weird turns that I didn’t see coming, but were very gratifying to write.
The great thing is I can start the day tomorrow on the bike and start covering ground faster tomorrow.
MORE CRAFTY STUFF
I’m at a point in the story where things start getting weird in a hurry. Even I don’t know what’s going to happen.
How I’m handling this from a craft perspective to keep readers turning the page (I hope, at least):
#1: Shorter sentences and paragraphs that keep readers moving down the page.
#2: Shorter chapters that end with a cliffhanger mixed with a “WTF is happening” vibe.
#3: Switching POVs frequently. I’m writing this story in the third person (which is odd for urban fantasy, I admit), and this is precisely one of the reasons I did it.
#4: Lapses in time that happen in the middle of chapter, without a section break. In one chapter that surprised me, I had a character sitting at a bar in the opening paragraph, and then halfway across town in the next, having a full-blown conversation with someone in the next (in another part of town), and then back at the bar. All without a section break. It just happens. Writing teachers will tell you not to do that…but anything can be done if you execute it properly.
Will the techniques I’m using work?
I have no idea, but my creative voice is really in its element now, having lots of fun and pulling out techniques that I’ve absorbed over the years and applying them. If they work, awesome. If not, then I’ll keep reading and learning. Actually, either way, I’ll keep reading and learning. But as I said early in this challenge, it’s really fun to see your creative voice spit something out that you didn’t know was in you.
WRITING AS MIND CONTROL
I heard Dean Wesley Smith say that writing is like mind control. How do you beam images into readers heads and anticipate how they will respond to those thoughts, and answer any objections they have just as they’re thinking them?
Some things readers will probably be thinking around this point in the story:
#1: “This dude did WHAT?”
#2: “I don’t understand…”
#3: “How does NAME connect with NAME?”
And so on.
If writing is mind control, that means you need to understand what people are thinking at first before you can exert control. A question I’m getting in the habit of asking myself as I loop is “what will the reader be thinking as they read this, and WHEN do I need to introduce a piece of information that they need to stay deep in the story vs. saying “wait a minute…” I’m still getting used to this. But the mega bestsellers have this skill down pat…
In other news, I’ve officially hit the 8 hour mark of the novel, which means I’ve been dictating the equivalent of a work day. And that’s gotten me half a novel. Hmmm….
Have a good night.
PROGRESS TRACKER
Words: 2,111 (965 in session 1, 1098 in session 2)
Calories: 100
Miles: 3
Time on bike: 60 minutes
TOTAL
Words: 24,876
Calories: 850
Miles: 25.5
Time on bike: 510 minutes (8.5 hours)
