First Page Draft.
The first step to writing is to actually take a first step. Duh?
You know that saying, every journey begins with the first step (or something like that)? To me, it works if my first step is more like a frantic, run from the-man-who-is-calling-from-inside-the house, kind of run. Not pretty. Arms flailing, lots of slips and falls, clothes get ripped open (possible showing of chest), and I will finally get caught and be brought to a dead standstill...but it gets me from point A to point B. Which is writing down the most words I can down in as little time as possible. Like a run for your life, you don't care what happens, you just go with it. So I just vomit words and ideas as fast as I can type (or write). I've found that if I think about grammar, spelling, word choice, sentence structure...all those little details, then I stop moving forward.
I do not get my ideas down on paper.
I do not write.
What I find works, is just throwing shit on a page and typing until I'm fresh out of shit.
Then I clean it up after.
This first part is often so bad that I need to put a warning for any member of the grammar police - this may cause long term trauma.
A quick glance over 'the mess' is usually enough to catch any extremely offensive language mistakes.
First patch.
What I do after that is bring out the space-aged technology! There is a handy little button on my computer that will Read-The-Text out loud. Hearing the words, instead of reading them, is an ingenious way to catch little tiny grammar errors, word repetition, and run on sentences that when read can seem okay because maybe they are full of important information but when heard out loud they just sound very long and badly written. Bring out the handy man and shore up these mistakes.
With a solid base I move onto the detail work. This is where I go old-school - Tree killing paper and toxic chemical pens.
Step 2) I print, actually print a physical copy of the words. Sometimes I try to be eco-friendly and print it small, two pages per sheet, low quality ink...that kind of thing. It's the actual object that I need. To hold it. Write on it. Doodle. List. Draw. Scratch. Arrow.
This is where I go over every word...does it bring me joy? If not, I throw it out...unless I can upgrade the word choice, then it has a chance of staying.
I can say I do not relish this step. A) It is time consuming. B) It is heavy lifting for the brain. 3) It's hard. No other way to describe it. It's hard!
The payoff is worth it though. By the time I'm done I have created a piece of art. Oh, and the writing has improved, at least I hope it has.
Here is page one.
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| First draft includes notes, doodles, and a coffee cup stain |
I just want to frame it and put it up on my wall. If I had a writing room and wasn't using my kid's old laptop while sitting at the kitchen table I would totally wallpaper the writer's nook with these editing pages. Ego much?
Do you have a method to your madness?
NEXT UP - I DRAW A MAP
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