How Do You Stick to a Project?
- Thread starter Sandor
- Start date
Personally I simply wake up one hour earlier, and then meddling with anything (social media makes it easier) except ballooning the word count. When twenty minutes passes usually I realize I did nothing but twiddling my toes on the corner of my table, which of course send me rushing before the monitor and put the day's work before I'm running out of that one hour.
As for draft, all my first draft is dreck, I can't get it perfect on the first time so I play with it (this is where all the planner techniques comes useful for me) such as exploring all the forks without losing the main thread, change up characters, rehash old character with new theme etc.
As how to easily coming to the writing the next day, the only trick I use is to stop when it's still going good (sometimes I just leave a sentence incomplete). While for keeping myself entertaining the project, what I do is to put what I feel and what I learn/heard as topic for my characters or their thought process or even their background/motivation/backstory.This way hit two birds with one stone and I don't have to do extra journaling.
Edit: actually answering the question
As for draft, all my first draft is dreck, I can't get it perfect on the first time so I play with it (this is where all the planner techniques comes useful for me) such as exploring all the forks without losing the main thread, change up characters, rehash old character with new theme etc.
As how to easily coming to the writing the next day, the only trick I use is to stop when it's still going good (sometimes I just leave a sentence incomplete). While for keeping myself entertaining the project, what I do is to put what I feel and what I learn/heard as topic for my characters or their thought process or even their background/motivation/backstory.This way hit two birds with one stone and I don't have to do extra journaling.
Edit: actually answering the question
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This is very useful and good to know, thank you. Something I'm realizing is that I think I need to write when it's dark or in a dark, enclosed space otherwise it's really hard for me to do it. I think it has to do with growing up as a lonely kid and teen reading and spending time in their room a lot. I'm currently unemployed so I'll have to figure out how I want to handle things when I get a job, but for now I can just relax and work on my own schedule.
I can't really comment on bouncing between projects as I struggle to make myself move to another project when I need to. I tend to get pretty absorbed into what I'm doing.
Vomit draft though, that's where I live. I don't think about it. I don't question it. For instance, the one I just started I know is severely lacking in some of the five senses. I also know there is some description that needs overhaul and I'm overusing a few words that I always tend to overuse in drafts. I don't care. That's a problem for the edits.
If I were to try and fix them now and polish every paragraph I know I'll lose the momentum and it will become tedious and frustrating instead of fun and interesting. I won't want to work on it. So I ignore those things and focus on where I'm going instead of where I've been.
When I sit down to write more, I'll quickly read over the last chapter to orient myself and get myself back in to the world and the movie in my head and then I just keep writing. I don't fix anything, even if I notice it, other than like a missing word. I don't sit there and try to figure out how I could have described x better in chapter 2. Nope. That's not for today. That's for the edits when it won't slow down the story but will instead expand the story.
I don't know if that's helpful, but it's what I do.
Vomit draft though, that's where I live. I don't think about it. I don't question it. For instance, the one I just started I know is severely lacking in some of the five senses. I also know there is some description that needs overhaul and I'm overusing a few words that I always tend to overuse in drafts. I don't care. That's a problem for the edits.
If I were to try and fix them now and polish every paragraph I know I'll lose the momentum and it will become tedious and frustrating instead of fun and interesting. I won't want to work on it. So I ignore those things and focus on where I'm going instead of where I've been.
When I sit down to write more, I'll quickly read over the last chapter to orient myself and get myself back in to the world and the movie in my head and then I just keep writing. I don't fix anything, even if I notice it, other than like a missing word. I don't sit there and try to figure out how I could have described x better in chapter 2. Nope. That's not for today. That's for the edits when it won't slow down the story but will instead expand the story.
I don't know if that's helpful, but it's what I do.
This is all helpful, thank you very much. I actually did a first draft of some Flash Fiction for a Weird West thing Apex is doing, so I'll polish that over this week and send it in. The advice in this thread is helpful with that.
I know what you mean; the new idea bug tends to bite me when I’m in the middle of a WIP
Most of the time, I do my best to force myself to focus on one project until it’s done. Sometimes, this is easier said than done. If a project is truly stalled, I don’t mind setting it aside to work on a new one. Some progress is better than none, after all.
Otherwise, I’ll jot down everything I’ve already figured out about the new idea, just so it’s out of my system and I don’t need to worry about forgetting anything. Then it’s back to work on the original WIP.
Can’t help you much there, I’m afraid, except to offer an alternative perspective. Some folks swear by “vomit drafts” where they throw everything on the page as fast as they can, but that’s never worked for me. Perfectionism forces me to revise and edit as I go, so my first drafts tend to be “clean” and very close to the final ones. Where you fall on that spectrum comes down to your temperament as a person and a writer, but it’s definitely worth experimenting.
I don't stick to a single project. I just work on whatever I feel like the most at the time. I can't force myself to write; it's simply not happening. So I wait until I have the desire to do it.
As for drafts, I more or less consider everything to always be non-final. I'm a huge perfectionist and it usually doesn't take long until I start thinking something I wrote is cringe and want to rework it. My first drafts don't live long as I prefer to edit stuff until I'm mostly satisfied with it before continuing. I'll make sure the house has stable foundations before building the walls, and then I'll make those as stable as possible before moving onto the roof.
As for drafts, I more or less consider everything to always be non-final. I'm a huge perfectionist and it usually doesn't take long until I start thinking something I wrote is cringe and want to rework it. My first drafts don't live long as I prefer to edit stuff until I'm mostly satisfied with it before continuing. I'll make sure the house has stable foundations before building the walls, and then I'll make those as stable as possible before moving onto the roof.
I can relate. I have a poor track record when it comes to sticking with a project. If we're talking short stories of 5K words or less, I can usually finish them before getting distracted by the next shiny thing, but anything bigger... I've got two massive, sprawling novel series going right now, and I've switched between them often, though lately I've been doing pretty okay at staying consistently with one of them.
I'm not sure that jumping around is necessarily, completely, a bad thing. I think it has its perks, though it's definitely something to keep an eye on if you're concerned about producing a finished story. Speaking from personal experience, having two huge projects gives me somewhere to go if I really get bogged down with one of them. If I work actively on Series A, there'll come a point when I get bored and frustrated with the whole thing and I just want out. While working on Series A, certain ideas for Series B will have manifested as I go about my days. Having left Series B alone for, say, 6 months, it'll feel reasonably fresh and exciting yet familiar when I get back to it, and I'll have all these juicy new ideas to implement.
I will say that this is not a method I recommend to anyone, it's simply what I've been doing. It's a tricky line to walk between letting a project cool off, and maintaining momentum. There really is no formula for this that I'm aware of, it's something you have to play by ear. It helps in my case that they're both Fantasy Comedies written in a similar style, taking place in the same universe with some crossover stuff. The swapping is part of how I find fun opportunities for Easter eggs and more involved crossovers. I think of these two series as part of the same overarching project, even though they're for the most part self-contained stories.
If I get sick of writing one story, going over to the other for a bit feels almost like vacation. It's good for spotting places where I repeat myself, like tackling a theme twice in more or less the same way or writing a too-similar character. I find places where one storyline or thematic inquiry from one story naturally sort of continues/branches off in the other.
I don't think any of this really addresses your question, I was just really in blather mode. As for how I stick to a project, the answer is I don't. Back in the day when I wrote only short stories I'd happily juggle up to five or more at a time, plus working on a novel besides, while working on an art piece and designing a board game on the side. I think the quality of all of them suffered. There is demonstrably such a thing as too much swapping. Nowadays I stick with my two novel series, with long cycles before a swap, with ordinarily no more than a single short story on the side and often not even that.
I think the thing is... One you've gotten really settled into a project, when you've got roots and emotional investment and actual passion about a project, it's okay to leave it aside for a bit to explore other things. Scratching the surface of a dozen different stories and never digging deep on any of them is probably largely a waste. As least it felt like one when I was doing that sort of thing.
I'm not familiar with the term "vomit drafts" but I suppose it explains itself. Not something I do or think would fit my workflow.
Was it Bradbury who had two typewriters facing each other? He'd work on one, get stuck/bored, spin the chair, work on the other, Pete and repeat. I think it was him.
