Day 111: Inconclusive experiment results
I mentioned yesterday about trying a new writing process.
First, I am going to try to treat my blocking like a rough draft, making it even more detailed than it already is, and giving myself permission to make it messy since in my mind, it's the equivalent of a synopsis. This will hopefully enable me to enter into creative flow state, since I won't be stopping to edit my blocking.
Next, I will do my writing like normal, working off of my blocking notes, but giving myself permission to edit as I go. This will cater to the part of me that enjoys writing clean copy without lots of things I will have to fix later in self-editing, which is the part of the process that I loathe the most. Essentially, this writing stage will be more like a first-pass edit rather than a first draft, which is why I don't need to think about creative flow state for this stage. I decided to think of it like a second draft of the book.
I'm not entirely sure how to record this in my writing log spreadsheet. I've been recording all my rough draft words and calculating words per hour rate, then recording my daily word count and time duration totals. However, I didn't bother recording words I wrote for blocking since I considered that part of my outlining process, Snowflake step 8 (scene spreadsheet).
Since my blocking is now taking the place of a rough draft, I will record those words in my spreadsheet. I also still have to record the words I type for the second draft stage, but that's become more like an editing stage, so I will put it in a different column.
Well, here I go! About to try something new.
***
I want to say it went like gangbusters, but I'm honestly not sure.
Part of the problem was that I had a hard time getting into the writing session. I kept seeing the blocking as a synopsis and wasn't putting much more detail than I normally do. I had to go back and redo the blocking for a scene a couple times because after I finished, I realized I hadn't done a good enough job earlier. I went back like that twice, so I did the blocking for the scene three times.
Also, doing the blocking didn't seem very "creative" to me. Blocking is a lot of decisions that I make about who goes where, what they say, what they do and think, etc. It doesn't have that writerly feel of writing a rough draft. So even though I tried to tell myself it was like a rough draft, it didn't really feel like it.
On the plus side, the blocking was really messy because I just kept writing without worrying about making it nice and clean, and so maybe a lot of the character actions ended up being more creative? I don't know. I hope so. I know I was doing a lot of freewriting or rambling on the page, and I ended up not spending a lot of time wondering about what happens next because ideas came to me pretty quickly.
The whole point of a messy blocking session was to try to get into flow state, but honestly I don't know that my output was terribly creative, just because of the nature of the blocking. A synopsis isn't a masterpiece. It felt a bit like trying to get into flow state to write a technical article. Since there isn't a lot of creativity required, it's kind of a waste.
My words per hour was pretty high, especially the later sessions. My earlier sessions were still kind of slow, and that brought my average down.
So overall, I don't know that my experiment was a failure or a success. I guess I also still need to try doing the writing/second draft stage with the blocking I did to see how that goes.
***
I did a little bit of writing/second draft stage on a scene I'd been working on yesterday, but I can't say I saw a huge difference in how easy it was to write or how quickly I was writing. In fact, my writing pace was abysmal, but since I only wrote for about an hour, my sample size might be too small to make a conclusion.
One major problem I ran into is that my blocking is so messy that it takes me a while to read through it and figure out what the heck is supposed to be happening in the scene. I remember feeling this way when I was self-editing a rough draft that I had dictated. It was so all over the place that it took forever just to get that mess coherent.
So a lot of my writing time was spent in deciphering my blocking. That's rather inefficient.
So I'm not sure if a messy blocking session is really helping matters any. I'm actually pretty disappointed because I really thought I'd come up with a fantastic way to have my cake and eat it too! But I do have to finish this current scene, and I have more scenes that I blocked today that still need to be written, so I'll have to try it and see before I make my final decision about this new method.
Blocking: Time spent: 4 hours, 54 minutes
Blocking: Total number of words: 5957 words
Blocking: Average writing speed: 1540 words per hour
Writing: Time spent: 52 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 553 words
Writing: Average speed: 638 words per hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 52 minutes
My takeaway for today: New method might not work after all, but I'll try it for a few more scenes to see.
First, I am going to try to treat my blocking like a rough draft, making it even more detailed than it already is, and giving myself permission to make it messy since in my mind, it's the equivalent of a synopsis. This will hopefully enable me to enter into creative flow state, since I won't be stopping to edit my blocking.
Next, I will do my writing like normal, working off of my blocking notes, but giving myself permission to edit as I go. This will cater to the part of me that enjoys writing clean copy without lots of things I will have to fix later in self-editing, which is the part of the process that I loathe the most. Essentially, this writing stage will be more like a first-pass edit rather than a first draft, which is why I don't need to think about creative flow state for this stage. I decided to think of it like a second draft of the book.
I'm not entirely sure how to record this in my writing log spreadsheet. I've been recording all my rough draft words and calculating words per hour rate, then recording my daily word count and time duration totals. However, I didn't bother recording words I wrote for blocking since I considered that part of my outlining process, Snowflake step 8 (scene spreadsheet).
Since my blocking is now taking the place of a rough draft, I will record those words in my spreadsheet. I also still have to record the words I type for the second draft stage, but that's become more like an editing stage, so I will put it in a different column.
Well, here I go! About to try something new.
***
I want to say it went like gangbusters, but I'm honestly not sure.
Part of the problem was that I had a hard time getting into the writing session. I kept seeing the blocking as a synopsis and wasn't putting much more detail than I normally do. I had to go back and redo the blocking for a scene a couple times because after I finished, I realized I hadn't done a good enough job earlier. I went back like that twice, so I did the blocking for the scene three times.
Also, doing the blocking didn't seem very "creative" to me. Blocking is a lot of decisions that I make about who goes where, what they say, what they do and think, etc. It doesn't have that writerly feel of writing a rough draft. So even though I tried to tell myself it was like a rough draft, it didn't really feel like it.
On the plus side, the blocking was really messy because I just kept writing without worrying about making it nice and clean, and so maybe a lot of the character actions ended up being more creative? I don't know. I hope so. I know I was doing a lot of freewriting or rambling on the page, and I ended up not spending a lot of time wondering about what happens next because ideas came to me pretty quickly.
The whole point of a messy blocking session was to try to get into flow state, but honestly I don't know that my output was terribly creative, just because of the nature of the blocking. A synopsis isn't a masterpiece. It felt a bit like trying to get into flow state to write a technical article. Since there isn't a lot of creativity required, it's kind of a waste.
My words per hour was pretty high, especially the later sessions. My earlier sessions were still kind of slow, and that brought my average down.
So overall, I don't know that my experiment was a failure or a success. I guess I also still need to try doing the writing/second draft stage with the blocking I did to see how that goes.
***
I did a little bit of writing/second draft stage on a scene I'd been working on yesterday, but I can't say I saw a huge difference in how easy it was to write or how quickly I was writing. In fact, my writing pace was abysmal, but since I only wrote for about an hour, my sample size might be too small to make a conclusion.
One major problem I ran into is that my blocking is so messy that it takes me a while to read through it and figure out what the heck is supposed to be happening in the scene. I remember feeling this way when I was self-editing a rough draft that I had dictated. It was so all over the place that it took forever just to get that mess coherent.
So a lot of my writing time was spent in deciphering my blocking. That's rather inefficient.
So I'm not sure if a messy blocking session is really helping matters any. I'm actually pretty disappointed because I really thought I'd come up with a fantastic way to have my cake and eat it too! But I do have to finish this current scene, and I have more scenes that I blocked today that still need to be written, so I'll have to try it and see before I make my final decision about this new method.
Blocking: Time spent: 4 hours, 54 minutes
Blocking: Total number of words: 5957 words
Blocking: Average writing speed: 1540 words per hour
Writing: Time spent: 52 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 553 words
Writing: Average speed: 638 words per hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 52 minutes
My takeaway for today: New method might not work after all, but I'll try it for a few more scenes to see.
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