The Writing Process

Writing is something I’ve always enjoyed doing, almost as much as I enjoy reading. I recently made the decision to stop thinking about writing a novel and instead actually go about doing so.

My first draft took me 20 days to write. I wrote in the evenings after the rest of my family went to bed, and in the mornings before work. I spent more time on weekends. At the end of those 20 days, I had over 86,000 words down, and my word processor reported that those 86,000 words comprised 290 pages.

For reference, here are my word totals by day:

Week 1: 4,536;   5,862;   4,199;   5,420;   4,520;   5,670;   1,205
Week 2: 7,691;   2,956;   3,644;   4,970;   3,082;   2,360;   3,556
Week 3: 6,592;   4,843;   5,517;   3,905;   2,608;   3,183

How do you write that quickly?

You must turn off your internal editor. My rules were simple. I had my topic (chapter and scene), and I had to write that scene as quickly as possible. I was not allowed to go back and change wording, punctuation, and the like. Those steps would all occur during the editing process. If I tried to perfect every sentence and find the perfect synonym or adjective, I’d probably still be writing my first chapter. Instead, I barreled through, generally finishing 1-2 chapters each day. I would write in the evenings until I literally could not continue, and I’d stop immediately. In one case, I stopped in the middle of a sentence and slept.

Is the work perfect? Of course not. No book is perfect. But I believe there’s enough to the story now that some would be interested in reading it. Will it ever be perfect? No. At some point,you must simply declare the work done, publish, and move to the next piece of new writing. If you edit your work until it’s perfect, you’ll never finish, and no one will ever be able to read what you’ve written. Not everyone will like it, of course, but some will. And that’s the part that truly matters.