Why OneTime a Day is Not Enough

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Now playing: 15-Elizabeth Harwood Quando m'en vo'
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Now playing: 13-Regine Crespin Un bel di vedremi
via FoxyTunes I am the type of person that if I stare at the computer too long, I get hypnotized by the monitor and soon I am falling asleep or at least, doing a facsimile thereof. I have tried the time thing, and found it did not work, nor did the word limit work. For one thing, sometimes I rush things so that at least I have the appearance of something being done, and another thing with the word limit, I might not have enough time. So I decided to do a little compromise
I call it the two period writing. The first one is I decide to write for an hour or so, just putting in the next two or more paragraphs and then go over them and check for those terrible reversal errors or passive sentences. Then in the afternoon or at night, I go over these paragraphs and try to make it much better.
Sometimes the second forty-five minutes becomes an hour, well because I am fussy. I am now more than half way through my novel and guess what, I found a better name for one of my characters, so the next revision I have to go through and change his name once again.

I find this much easier than writing all in the morning and then finding that I have not gone far enough because I spend a good deal time on one paragraph when I could be writing a whole page. So now I write a whole page (well not the 1000 word, but that will come back) and do a little correction, since I also have the page from my former draft and I am copying that plus also inserting and changing it around. In the evening, I have not had my former draft, so I can work on revising and correcting what I wrote that morning.

That is much better, but that does not sometimes work. I mean if I write in the morning, and there is something going on, then I find I have not written as much as I like. So I often wind up keeping the page open all day, and add a bit here and there. Then I check the word count to see if I get past my goal that right now is 500 words a day. That is what writing is like. You just cannot time it. Now if only I had a lap top, then I could write whenever I felt like it, not have to go to the computer room.

Fiction Writing:Confirming your ideas

I just got back from a trip across Canada to P.E.I. and through the States. Now while I was in Prince Edward Island, we went to visit the old forts that were now covered with sod, and read the plaque about the first French citizens who became the first permanent settlers of the Island. It was quite hilly and quite steep as we went from one top of the hidden fort to reach another top and it reminded me of the shows on England about the areas where the Britons had their defenses which now are covered with pasture and farmland, but if you are in a plane above can still see the outlines.

Well I did not see the outlines, us being on ground, but I am writing a novel about a man going into a strange land, and getting a feel how his legs and his heart felt as he went from one area to another, depending not on a car, but on his own transportation, be it horse or foot.

Now most research is done before the story starts. You go to a bakery and learn how they make bread, and then you incorporate a bakery in your story, but sometimes one can get understand how people's bodies reacted by later going through the same thing yourself or as much as you can take. And it also shows that you may not have been far wrong in telling, "how his heart almost burst and his shoulders ached as he climbed the crevice."