This power pack is based the Author Fu one and Chuck Wendig's suggestion that if you want to write a book, and you do 350 words every week day, then after a year you will have a book. It's like the opposite of Nanowrimo . The icon for it comes from one of his books, and a lot of the ideas are things he talks about in his blog. Other parts are things I've stolen from the Author Fu one, or elsewhere.
Power-ups[]
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Tentpoles and Outlining Do some planning for the story - the tentpoles are the big important elements: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl. These shouldn't change too often. Outlining is the smaller bit like why the boy loses the girl, and how he wins her back.
Look at the map It is all well and good doing all this planning and world building, but I have to review my notes. This would be a good use of the mornings, or other times when I don't have very long. It is embarrassing when I can't remember the villain's name, or what the main character does.
Who says books have to be written chronologically? Feeling stuck? Just getting no-where with the book? Timejump to a sexy part of the story that has already been done to death inside my head a million times, and get it down on paper.
Pounding Keys While the plan is for 350 words a day, if I am honest with myself that won't always happen. This one is for when I've done something, but not the whole shebang. It can also be used when I've done extra towards it (which will also be in dribs and drabs)
Booster Rocket Most of my writing time is stolen from somewhere. This power-up is for the rarest sort - writing done at home, on holidays or other insanely impossible times. | |
Bad Guys[]
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Real-time Editor Yes, writing is re-writing, but it helps to have something down first. The occasional tweak of the previous line is OK, but we want the word count going upwards. You can polish a turd to a high sheen, but you've got to have the bowel movement first. Too much editing in the writing stage leaves you constipated (and that's enough with that metaphor). Type: Mental Blocker
Inside the Voice of Suck A more malignant version of the Real-time Editor, Inside the Voice of Suck is most often triggered by rereading (or having someone read over my shoulder while I am typing). Everything I've just read is obviously crap and should be torn out, root and branch. Delete! Delete! Change it completely - the word choice, the direction of the scene, the tone - anything but what was just down. Type: Mental Blocker
Vitally Important Research TVTropes , Wikipedia , a picture search or even looking up the meaning of a word are all ways of sabotaging myself by damming the word flow for something that may only tangentially be of relevance. Make a note of it, and come back to it after hitting the day's word count. That extra tab is so alluring, so don't go there Type: Trap
Fabulous Tabulous By having my story in Google Docs, I can access it anywhere - at work, at home, on holidays. But that also means that it is oh so easy to hit a new tab and randomly lose a whole bunch of time down the internet. Not research. Just habit of "hey, let's go look at this website..." This one is most likely to be small and pernicious, hitting many times in a day. It's not so serious once the words are down for the day, but until they are, try and reign this one in Type: Trap
World Enough and Time Everyone has surely heard the one with the jar, the rocks, the pebbles and the sand (I like the version with beer too, obviously). Here it is if you haven't seen it. One of my rocks is now story writing. I have to give it right of way, or words aren't going to get written down. There's always excuses for why it wasn't done, but I get the same handful of hours each day as everyone else. I need to assign more time towards writing. Losses to this guy can be mitigated by doing something, even if it's not the 350 words minimum. Pounding Keys, Booster Rocket, Scene Stealer are all small steps that can be used Type: Trap
Flash in the Pan Yes, Flash Fiction is a great way of honing writing, getting an audience and working to a deadline. But my book doesn't have a deadline, so it is easy for a novel to be kicked down the road because of some Johnny Come-Lately that isn't going to hang around. Only* play with flash fiction after the day's 350 words have been logged.
Type: Trap |
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Quests[]
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Baby steps to a book Chuck Wendig in this post says that if you want to write a book, you can do it in a year, if you just write 350 words every day - not counting weekends. Hopefully I'm clicking on this daily.
Meeting the wordcount Description: 350 words a day, 5 days a week is 1750 words. I want to try and hit that every week. (In mine, I also included a link to the Google Document Spreadsheet so allies could check on me and make sure it was going up) |
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