Collecting

I've been wanting to write about my new project, but I'm hesitant to do so because I'm superstitious like that. I'm on my second of glass of red wine, though, and right now it seems like a good idea. Maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow.

I was lucky enough to meet and study with Janet Desaulniers in Chicago. Right now I'm trying her method of writing that she calls "collecting." She always encouraged people to do Nanowrimo, but collecting can be your own personal version of Nanowrimo. Essentially, you pick a certain number of days, say 30, and a certain number of words you will write each of those 30 days. And you don't put too much thought into writing; I think she does this by calling it "collecting." You start collecting a bunch of different words and don't worry yet too much about how they go together.

So I'm trying my own variation of collecting right now. I have these three ideas for what I think might be novella-length works (but knowing me and my tendency to write long, they will probably be short novels). The only thing that connects these stories is a sort of dark mood and place, the southwest. I couldn't decide which of the three to work on at first, so I was sort of piddling around. I'd work on this one for a bit, then switch and write notes for another, and then go to the third, and essentially I wasn't getting much done with all my dither-dathering.

I sat down and started writing notes for all three. And for whatever reason I could see behind door #2 most clearly and I had a sense of the shape of the whole thing, so I wrote a quick outline of 25 or so chapters, which in my case are typically 8-10 pages each. Or at least they were in the last novel. We'll see if that holds true again.

I started writing on April 1. Since writing novels sometimes seems like a fool's errand, this start day seems appropriate. I decided to give myself a daily word count (1200), but only for Monday-Friday. Weekends are kind of crazy around here, what with errands and spending time with toddlers and what not. So weekends are for revising (if I want to) or just getting life stuff done. So I've been doing this for almost two weeks, and nine days of writing. I have more than 15,000 words and I'm guessing at an end total of about 80,000. I could be wrong about that; 80,000 really is just a shot in the dark at this point, but it's a goal. 1200 has been very doable and so far I haven't had a hard time reaching my word count. Monday-Friday also seems to be working well.

Maybe it's just this technique, or maybe it's the story itself, but right now the writing is not hard. I'm writing quickly and not sweating over the details. And if there's something I know I need to add in later but at the moment I'm not sure what it is, I put these [ ] as a note to myself and move on so I can meet my daily word count. If I can continue at this rate, I could have a rough draft by the end of June. (Assuming I haven't jinxed myself by writing this. The first rule of fight club ...)

This project is totally fictional. There is virtually no element of autobiography and part of me wonders if that's why this feels so easy. It feels like playing is what it feels like. And a huge part of me distrusts it. I think: it can't be good if it's not hard. I haven't actually done much revising yet, because I'm afraid if I go back and read it and it sucks, then I'll stop. But it's okay, I keep reassuring myself, if this is my shitty first draft. If this is just the skeleton (to mix metaphors), I can add some meat on the bones the next go around.

I really hope collecting works. 'Cause right now it's almost summertime and the living is easy...