Busy Day 6

Started today with a gym visit. That was fun. (I'll leave it up to you to decided if I'm being sarcastic or not - read *yes*)

The early activity definitely got the writing mojo warmed-up, though. So YAY! for that.

Half of today's writing schedule was spent on classwork and the other half on the WIP.

While drafting, it dawned on me that I hadn't shared how I'm drafting this new WIP with you lovely folk. I shared the outlining. The random notes. The transfer process. But not the drafting?
We must fix that now.
You may have seen me discuss Fast Drafting on the blog (a workshop I took with Candace Havens). That specific workshop taught me to draft 5,000 words a day for 2 weeks straight to produce a 75,000 word first draft. After all, you can't fix a blank page. Right?
(Nora Roberts thinks so, she said that gem of knowledge - though her exact quote is: I can't fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.) 
That workshop taught me that I can finish a first draft quickly, so that I have something to work with and revise.

However, there was something missing for me. For my process.
I was happy to have a first draft out, but I felt that I had lost ideas in the drafting phase because I was worried over word choice, descriptions, pacing and the ever elusive 5k word count each day.

To be far to Fast Draft (because it DOES work), I shouldn't have been thinking of those things. Part of the reason we're able to get out such high quantity of words is because we squelch the inner editor. However, I decided not to write that way again after a second try because I didn't want to write 5k words of sloppy prose - and that's what I personally was doing.

So, I repeat, Fast Drafting does work.
But I needed other ways to work the quick first draft into my process.

And as fate so often presents itself, I saw a link on Twitter for an article by Anne Greenwood Brown: Kicking Out a Fast First Draft.

I thought it would be similar to the Fast Draft process I had already tried.
I was wrong.
And I've never been so happy to be so wrong!

This speaks more to my process. A few posts ago, I stated that I have scenes/dialog/etc that come to me throughout the day. I get bursts of pivotal scenes and relationship arcs. Why wouldn't I lay down the bare-boned foundation of a first draft this way, all the way through the whole story, then go back and grow the atmosphere, decorate the world, light the day and darken the night?

I never did this before, because I allowed myself to believe that writing was done a certain way, but we all have our own process. For some, they draft straight through a scene - full scenery, dialog, great prose - beginning to end of each scene. Others write whole snippets non-lineraly. While some write the foundation of the scene first, then go back and create the story; like me.

And what works for some, doesn't need to work for all.

Word Count: 1078

I hope you're finding a process for your style of drafting, Dear Reader.
Happy writing!