JeffKirvin.net

I’m at 10,548 right now, and I still have a write-in to go to tonight with three 30-minute timed writings. I should get my 3,000 words for the day easily and might push all the way up to 12,000.

I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’ve had this kind of output only once before, when I finished Between Heaven and Hell. And even then, I was too quick to slam on the brakes when things started to feel out of control.

Now I’m out of control and I think I like it. Every day I’m not only blissing out in the writing but I’m continually surprised at what the characters do and say. And I figure if I’m surprised, the reader should be too.

My boss at work asked me today, “What’s the point of writing so fast if it’s not going to be any good? If you’re just going for word count, what difference does it make?”

My answer was to quote Papa Hemingway: “The first draft of anything is shit.” Basically, this gives me permission to get the first draft out of the way because you can’t rewrite it and make it good unless you have a draft to rewrite.

But honestly, I’m not so sure that’s true. Not that I won’t be revising this. I’ll have do some major surgery just to make it readable; I tend to stop using quotation marks when I really get rolling. Nothing but words, nothing to slow me down. But I’ve noticed something that frankly has knocked me on my ass in the past three days, and I can scarcely imagine how it’s going to balloon out in the next 27.

Writing fast leads to better writing, not worse.

I know that sounds crazy. It sounds crazy to me, too, and I didn’t believe it when Stephen King suggested it in On Writing. But when you’re just worried about getting the story out, as fast as possible, you tend to get out of your own way. There’s less meddling from the author and more pure story. The characters have more control and do things their own way. So far, my characters have pleasantly surprised me at every turn and I think it’s the momentum that lets that happen. I just never get my own fat ass out of the way when I’m writing only a few hundred words a day, if that, or writing a couple thousand per session, but with writing sessions weeks apart.

First drafts need to be white hot to be any good. They have to be about story, about character. Craft comes later, in rewrite. But first, get out of the way and let the characters tell you a story.