Anna DeStefano's Blog

So you’re in the middle of NANOWRIMO and typing words and pages every day until your fingers fall off and your brain short circuits. But what are you creating? Is it anything you’ll keep once December arrives? Drafting with creative freedom is key in this sort of challenge, but creating with purpose is the linchpin to your success.

Write without constraint, yes. As I said in last week’s How We Write post, draft without clinging too tightly to planning or expectation. BUT you have to revise every rough word you draft. And you don’t ant to have written yourself into so many dark corners and black holes that a finished novel that you can sell will be impossible to carve out of your draft.

How do you lay the groundwork for the “rework” you know needs to be done, while you’re giving your story the creative freedom it needs to come to life?

Me? Remember that I’m a geeky, techno-loving girl who while drafting must continually slap my hand and let go of the overly organized stuff that enables the more analytical side of my brain. So nix on the forms and charts for me. But keeping track of changes I see coming and new things I draft into the story on the fly is my thing. Being analytical while I create is crucial, without allowing the right side of my brain to interrupt the left’s mad dash toward a draft’s finish line.

I’m in the midst of writing Sweet Summer Sunrise, the next book in my Seasons of The Heart series for Montlake, and I’m crashing things as usual on a pretty tight deadline. Layered, emotional, complex things. Four points of view–one of them a child. Community. Romance. Psychological and relationship realism that’s more valuable to me than all the rest. At least three subplots going on at once, and that’s just the external stuff. Internal journeys are even more sensitive to overwriting and wandering, because you have to be subtle about how you share a character’s journey so the reader doesn’t feel beaten over the head with it.

Of course there will be mistakes in my rough draft. I have to learn to accept that and again, as I said in last week, allow myself to write crap for a while so the better stuff will flow, too. A mistake I can always do something about later. An empty page, not so much.

My reality is that the whole package of what I’m writing is too complicated a thing to come together in a single draft.

Yet I need that first draft, so I have something I can revise and refine and rework until the story I’m dying to tell takes shape. So how do I keep up with everything I want to do, but am not quite doing yet, as I draft–without break the delicate flow of my creativity of these first words on paper? (more…)

NANOWRIMO… Write a book in a month… Easy, right? NOT.

How about we just talk about writing every day for a week, for those of us who have trouble with the grand scope of NANO. One day at a time for seven days, how will you draft every day–with PURPOSE–so that by the end of a week you’re motivated and enthusiastic and encouraged enough to go for another week. Screw the month-long pressure of being finished with a completed novel?

I teach draft writing, even though it’s my downfall. I’m currently drafting a new book and it’s driving me CRAZY because I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen next. But I can’t know, not for certain no matter how much I plan what I’m going to do, until I draft the darn thing.

So why all the drama?

Frailty, they name is woman???

No, I’m just a perfectionist who doesn’t feel good when what’s coming out of my mind rough isn’t the golden, beautiful thing I want it to be yet. I have to give myself permission to write crap for a while, in order to have something that I can polish later. Shudder. Not my happy place, but this week I’m going to dive in and rough stuff out regardless.

Join me, won’t you?

Here’s the plan:

1. Write into a new story or book every day. EVERY day. Not thinking about it every day. WRITING it every day.
2. Don’t get up from your computer until your daily progress is done. Finished. DONE. No exceptions.
3. Don’t buy into the excuse that you can’t, because it’s too hard. It’s supposed to be hard, especially when you’re distracted or afraid or worried or mired in some other details of your life.
4. Don’t think you’re alone. I’m right there with you. If I can deal with it, you can. So, deal with it ;o)

And you know I wouldn’t leave you floundering without some, hopefully, helpful suggestions to keep you writing, right? (more…)