Welcome to Days 8, 9, & 10 of Crashcourse!

A few days ago, I wrote about how work on Crashcourse had slowed to an excruciating crawl thanks to major amounts of self-editing. So, how’d I do over the weekend? Did I manage to speed things up? Let’s find out!

A Path Forward, Perhaps

I guess I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I edit constantly as I write, massaging the text over and over again. The result is polished, close to publish-ready. However, the process is exhausting and often feels antithetical to creativity. Which makes sense when you think about it. My creative voice is trying to let loose, to explore my subconscious, to tell a brand new story. And yet, it gets shifted to the back burner by all of these edits. I’ve been writing this way for a long time and I think my stories have suffered for it. I vowed to take a different path this weekend. So, how’d I do?

Well, I spent most of the Memorial Day weekend with family and friends. In fact, I only managed to squeeze in one writing session, and that was for just twenty minutes on Sunday morning. Doesn’t sound like much, right? But get this … I wrote 584 words in those 20 minutes. That works out to 1,752 words/hour. Wow. I mean … just … wow. That’s a record for me and it’s not even close.

Now, here’s the thing. Those 584 words are … imperfect. They’re unedited and extremely raw. Honestly, I’m not even sure they make sense. A part of me is strongly tempted to edit them, to massage them like I always do. However, I’m going to try to keep that urge in check. The whole point of this is to learn to trust my creative voice, to give it room to speak. And editing right now seems like a good way to sabotage that effort. So, I’m going to try to keep writing this way, with no editing, for the duration of the book. Crazy, huh? I’m curious to see how it works out. Part of me worries I’ll end up with a unintelligible mess that’ll require months of heavy editing down the road. Part of me thinks my creative voice will settle down and the end result will surprise me. Hmm … I guess we’ll find out.

Crashcourse Totals

Weekend Total: 584 words in 0:20. 1,752 words/hour

Total: 2,542 words in 9:10. 277 words/hour