I scribble things down on-the-run constantly when I've got sewing/jewelry/etc. designs in mind that I'm trying to plot out, or taking notes throughout the day for a perfume review...but I can't seem to do that with fic, oddly enough. I used to try, but that seemed to bring out my version of the can't-go-back-to-things issue Cho is talking about below. Somehow, once I get things down in black-and-white, if they're in anything but a near-finished form it really triggers the most horrifically self-critical side that thinks everything I do is utterly trite and needs to be destroyed now before I get any more embarassed by it. Keeping the drafting strictly mental somehow lets me do an endrun around that tendency.
The downside of this is of course that if I don't sit down and make the time to write when something has hit the end of that mental composition cycle, and instead get distracted by something new and shiny, I do lose all the specific turns of phrase I might have had and will have to start all over again. It's not a total loss as the plot outline is still there, but the dialogue and POV stuff has to be redone. I'm in that pickle with the companion piece I had in mind to go with The Lost and Found right now -- I was just about ready to work on that one when the kink meme came along and distracted me with the hair-fetish prompt, and now I have to sort of think my way backwards and find that particular awkward voice again. Ah well, it's not the worst thing to have back-burnered I suppose, after that last bit of amateur dentistry without anesthetic it'd be a nice change to work on something a bit more hopeful.
The single-setting thing doesn't seem all that impressive to me because most of my fics really aren't that long, and while I've never timed my usual WPM I know it's definitely higher than what I managed here for the timed prompt! Generally it seems to be somewhere in the ballpark of a few hours for stuff in the low-to-mid thousands word count. If I were better about being able to put things down and pick them up again, maybe I'd have some longer pieces under my belt!
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-03-26 12:21 am (UTC)The downside of this is of course that if I don't sit down and make the time to write when something has hit the end of that mental composition cycle, and instead get distracted by something new and shiny, I do lose all the specific turns of phrase I might have had and will have to start all over again. It's not a total loss as the plot outline is still there, but the dialogue and POV stuff has to be redone. I'm in that pickle with the companion piece I had in mind to go with The Lost and Found right now -- I was just about ready to work on that one when the kink meme came along and distracted me with the hair-fetish prompt, and now I have to sort of think my way backwards and find that particular awkward voice again. Ah well, it's not the worst thing to have back-burnered I suppose, after that last bit of amateur dentistry without anesthetic it'd be a nice change to work on something a bit more hopeful.
The single-setting thing doesn't seem all that impressive to me because most of my fics really aren't that long, and while I've never timed my usual WPM I know it's definitely higher than what I managed here for the timed prompt! Generally it seems to be somewhere in the ballpark of a few hours for stuff in the low-to-mid thousands word count. If I were better about being able to put things down and pick them up again, maybe I'd have some longer pieces under my belt!