The Draft

Lisa has decided that she’s moving too slowly for her tastes, and so has decided to run herself through a Fast Draft. Essentially what that means is that she turns out 20 pages a day as quickly as she can, no dithering, no revising, no stopping, no whining. In two weeks, she’ll have a workable first draft that can then be revised.

She wanted company, I think, and felt it would do me some good. I’ve never been terribly clever, so.

Ideally, one counts pages or words (250 per page is about right), and then one can determine if one is on quota. This one has determined that Quota is the name of a demon in the fourth ring of hell, the one for correcting those who sell themselves short because there was a quantifiable datum that showed them to be less than perfect — and then torture their loved ones with whining for 25 years.

Quota, thus do I cast you out.

I have a job, a wife, a life, and some moderate need of sleep. If I set myself to 20 pages a day, I will fail, and, failing, will begin the process of self-castigation, publicly mourning the waste I have made of my gifts and my days. I will reflect loudly that no one should love me, for I am an underachiever and ne’er-do-well, and that children should be kept from me lest I soil their lives with my poor influence and bad character. While I am castigating, I will neglect to keep writing, thus proving my allegations.

*yawn*

So, yeah, casting out the demon Quota. *casts* Good upper body workout, throwing quotas out the door.

My goal is just the same as Fast Draft, without the number attached. I will work as hard and as often as I can, in any spare minutes. I will treat this as a two-week sprint; I don’t need to do it forever, I just have to do this to the finish line. At that point I will have so much manuscript complete that whatever is left will be the work of another few days, and then I can edit.

I suspect a whole new hell will be opened then, but that hell is for tomorrow.

With this as preamble, the next post will be the norm for the next 14 days.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry