This may be more of a writers or creatives post than our typical Authors in Our Midst posts, and I think it will be great fun. Some might call the concept crazy, but you won’t hear that from me.
Let’s give a warm welcome back to Werebear, who has been sorely missed in the comments!
And now for something completely different!
Writing a book in 10 Days!
by Werebear
I’m in the midst of a fascinating experiment. I’m writing a book in ten days.
The book which so inspired me was How to Write Pulp Fiction by James Scott Bell, writer of the Mike Romeo series. Five thousand a day until 50,000 words. The goal is creating what Monty Python called “a ripping yarn.” A spell-binding story.
I’ve been healing up and my brain is working much better. Only, at unpredictable times. This makes conventional employment still impossible, but fortunately I’m not conventional. So I set myself the challenge. Ten days to draft, 2-4 days to let it cool, and then I turn on my editing mode.
This is rough copy, of course, especially since a lot of it I dictate on my nature walks or while sitting in the car once I get to the grocery store. By breaking up my writing sessions throughout the day, and making my scenes mostly dialogue, the words can flow between the characters I’m inventing as needed.
I’m using the dictation app JustPressRecord and the writing software Scrivener. The next step is collecting this mess into chapters, but any outline/mind map software can work.
Because I’m not writing it in order. I think of a scene it must need, and I start setting the scene and discover characters. This is the first time I’ve ever first drafted an entire novel. My next cat book is progressing with much more polished chapters. My fiction book is going well but is more advanced, though I can still use this technique to fill in remaining gaps.
I’ve always been a fan of draft, then edit. But never went to the tallest diving board before, starting a whole book with only a vague idea. It’s forming a satirical tone to match the outrageous premise. This is the most fun I’ve ever had writing something. Maybe I need fun. Maybe my readers do.
This might be helpful for any writer who dreads staring at the blank page. Because drafts don’t have to be good. They merely need enough potential to be polished into something good.
At five days I was halfway, 25,103 words. Now I see a book. And I think, like the main character in Stephen King’s Misery, the last difficult years might mean I’ve been “Scheherazade for myself.”
This is such a general creative question: “Where do you get your ideas?” (For writing and anything else.) My answer is that ideas are everywhere. I think it’s really about: “How do you make them live?”
Authors In Our Midst: Writing a Book In 10 Days!Post + Comments (34)