I have been writing a lot without remembering to advertise! Blasphemy!
Check out these new things I’ve got in my Etsy shop [EDIT 1/12/15: Etsy shop has since been closed but I’m leaving these images up because I’m a showoff]:
Okay on to the blogging.
As some of you may know, I am attempting to write a book almost entirely by hand. And it’s going well for me so far. The hand-written method means I am less tempted to reread, edit, and nitpick. Which is good. But sometimes three days after I’ve written a page, I remember something I wanted to include in that scene. What do I do then? Easy. I write myself a note in the margin.
Or if I decide I want to embellish a little, all I have to do is go back, add an asterisk and put the extra writing in the margins. And if I don’t like what I decided to write in that margin, I just leave myself a note to fix it later.
Sometimes I just forget a pattern of colors that I used for a life-sized game board. The margins are useful for that, too.
And other times when I’m feeling kinda writer’s blocked, I simply doodle until I get back on track.
Lastly, there was this one time I accidentally dotted an E. So I did this:
Apparently I thought it was necessary for my future self to know why I drew a thought bubble over a word.
What I’m saying is that margins can be useful. It’s okay to not get it right on the first try. In fact, it’s preferable. There’s less pressure that way.
I feel like a lot of people have the wrong idea about the writing process. Like…they think that first you have to create the skeleton, then go back through and add flesh and muscle, and finally you polish it up with some facial features and pretty hair. But that’s just not the case. As far as I can tell, the first step for me has always been figuring out what a skeleton’s even supposed to look like. My first drafts have a pelvis sticking out of an eye socket, with both arms on one side of the body and the left foot jammed between two ribs. And that’s okay! Because the next stage of editing is when you can take a quick anatomy lesson, show your skeleton to friends and have them rearrange some things. Then, and only then, can you start to think about muscles and tendons. It’s a tough process, but as I said, it is also liberating. There’s no pressure to know what the hip bone connects to. You just go all out, give it your best, and know that no mistake is unfixable.
Soooo…that’s it. I’ll write again soon! Bye!
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