My first priority is to get the job done, so that's what I aim at. Once the first draft is finished, I start editing it and trying my best to make it perfect. I don't see a point in perfecting a few chapters in a book I'll never finish.
Usually everything, even the smallest thing - like this post - is word flow and then editing. The pauses are generally for thought about the topic for the next sentence or paragraph or page, not for thought about the actual specific words that I'll use. Then once a body of words are down, I'll tear them up, move sentences and paragraphs around, insert new sentences and paragraphs, sometimes just delete the whole thing and start the word flow over. The first words are ingredients, raw material - I have zero expectation that they will be good. A "body of words" depends on what I'm writing. For an itty bitty thing like this post, it's a sentence. For something that will end up being several hundred words, it's a few paragraphs. For something that will be a few thousand or many thousand words, I actively restrain myself from editing until I've "flowed" a few hundred to a couple of thousand words. This is because the editing is generally based on the context of the surrounding text - there's no point in creating, for example, a perfect transition between paragraphs if one of those paragraphs is going to end up being moved two pages away. (Hmm. As an example, I re-read this and noticed that I'd added the 'raw material' sentence between the first use of the phrase "body of words" and my definition of that concept. And I really should reshuffle so that those two are closer together again, so the reader doesn't have a brief, 'body of what? oh, yeah' stumble. But I'm going to leave this post in an incompletely edited state, and see if it makes my brain explode. ) ChickenFreak
If it's a good day I can sit and pound out 5k in a few hours without difficulty (although I force myself to take a break every twenty minutes when writing fast so I don't risk hurting my wrists. Fast writing for me = 1k+ in 20 minutes.) Other times I struggle to even get a hundred words in a day. Those days I plough through it anyway and often it'll get better after a couple of hundred. When that happens I tend to go back and rewrite the few slow paragraphs to find out why I struggled with them.
I check each sentence as I go. Make sure it's something I really want to write. Doesn't stop the editing afterwards, but makes sure the sentences don't need up revising when they do. I never read though the stuff I post online. I just hope for the best. Shouldn't really on here what with the prevalence of grammar nazi's. I wonder if that's a frowned upon term here?
my writing tends to flow quickly and easily most of the time, though occasionally i'll pause briefly to come up with the best word...
I usually write in stops and starts because I have a rubbish attention span, but if you removed all the visits to farmville, staring at the fish/out the window/at the cute guy opposite me on the train, then I'd probably write in a reasonably unbroken way in that once I'm using my pen nothing much stops me in terms of difficulty getting to the next word. It's only once a plot weakness comes to mind that I'll pause and try and think of the next reasonable set of actions.
My ideas flow quite freely while writing because I rarely plan the story in detail beforehand. Word usage, on the other hand, does not, so I need to go back and vigorously edit the whole piece after finishing the barebones of the plot to make it sound readable. That's hard to do on a paper, so I write slower when writing on paper.
Once I get a hold of a good idea, I'm usually off and running. OTOH, if I'm on a roll and I get interrupted, I sometimes come back hoping to pick up where I left off and...nothing.
Pretty much this. I opened up my Manuscript today and went through the last three paragraphs -- which I had written the night before -- and changed the grammar and adjectives in every paragraph so it better fit what I envisioned in my mind. However, the point is to do your best every time you write you will write and keep in mind that it is going to come out a little differently depending on mood, how your day was, experiences, and so on even though the overall voice will remain the same. Just stay true to who you are as you write, and you will be fine.
It depends. Mostly, the words just flow and I edit later (as many people have said). But when I'm writing dialogue I tend to pause more so I can consider the right voice for the speaking character. Also, I "think with my hands", which basically means that when I'm really inspired my fingers go mental and start waggling (stimming), so that I can imagine the next part of my scene. I can't really help it. I pause for that, because I can't write and waggle at the same time.
While that might sound like a good idea, it might be the worst thing you can do. I have an ex-girlfriend who spent three years writing the first draft of her book, then nearly scrapped it all because "it wasn't good enough". I asked if I could read some of it, but at first she kept saying it was really bad and didn't want anyone to read it. But she eventually let me read a few pages, and I thought it was pretty good. She decided to edit it to make it perfect, but her version of "perfect" doesn't exist. She just kept editing and editing the first paragraph for months before she finally moved on to the second paragraph, but she returned to the first one after a few days. As far as I know, she's still editing it. The point is you can edit all you want, but you are either happy with it, or you are not. It's better to publish a story you are 90% satisfied with than having it unpublished because you can't reach 100%. At some point you need to be able to tell yourself "enough is enough" and let go.
When I'm in the right mood and know where I'm going, the words normally flow well. If I get stuck or think I may need to look something up, I will sometimes 'bold' that sentence or just leave a gap and come to it later. Example, I wanted someone to make a reference to a a very expensive restaurant she'd eaten at in NYC, but couldn't think of one off hand. So I just put 'xxxxxx' and carried on.
I try to take down what whatever comes to mind at the moment, then I walk away from it for a period of time and let it digest for a period of time. I can fine tune the details and structure down the road. To me, getting the raw idea down is of monumental importance. You could lose it forever if you don't jot it down.... and you may never get that thought back again. Who knows what may come to you the next time you approach your initial draft? Bearing in mind that I'm relatively new to this myself.
If I sit down and just try to write and force the words onto the paper, they usually don't come out very well. Throughout my day, however, I'm always thinking about writing, so if a word or phrase comes to mind that I like, I write it down on a scrap piece of paper, shove it in my pocket, and hope that I remember to take it out before I wash my pants... When I'm really feeling inspired, I can sit down and just write and write and write in a nonstop, four- or five-hour spurt, never bothering to edit anything along the way. (Then I read it the next day and cringe.)
If I waited for inspiration, my children would starve. I need to sit down and get on with it. If inspiration wants to show up and help, that's great. If it doesn't... well, that book isn't writing itself and my editor gets cranky when deadlines are approaching.
I am in the process of brainstorming, and I often feel myself dismissing ideas because I believe that I lack the knowledge necessary to actually write that idea. Examples might be if I wanted to write a story with a setting of 19th century America or a story with the protagonist having a job as a influential business leader. Some of my ideas wouldn't take a ton of research, but others would take an inordinate amount that I don't have the time for. Anyway, when you are brainstorming, do you think about the practicality of writing your ideas? Or do you employ an open free flow, and then worry about the practicality later? I think that I will get responses mostly in line with the latter option, but I just wanted to see what people's processes were.
If I really want to write a certain story, and it's going to require time to research in order to do it right, then I do the research. If I know that it's not practical to do the research, then yes, I put it off. I never take on a project if I know I won't be able to do it justice.
I got to ask; what the fuck does 'Flow' mean? Are we talking about clear and logical sentences that are grammatically correct? Are we talking about the use of Speech Rhythm that is used in Metrical Writing? Are we talking about the sequence of actions and events that move the story along while keeping the reader engaged? I am seriously curious; to you people that use this word, what does it mean? Because when someone asks/says -and a lot of new writers do- 'I want my story to have a nice 'flow,' I am not entirely sure how to approach/critique their work. I don't use the word 'flow', and if I was to guess, my definition of what it is would be 1 of the above or a mixture of the three. /discuss.
It's a pretty nebulous fuckin term, eh. Almost to the point of uselessness, I'd argue. I've used it on a sentence level, and I mean it in the "do these words sound nice together?" way. A combination of making sure the sentences make sense / get the point across and also don't sound stilted, don't have needless repetition, don't have too many clauses, whatever. ETA: Although let's be real, I don't say flow. I say things like 'work', and 'jive', 'follow', and 'trash garbage'.
To me it means smooth transitions from one part of the story to the next without any awkward or abrupt change that takes me out of the story. It's interesting, transitions are one place I can transfer what I learned as a dancer into writing. The difference between a choppy, choreographed-within-an-inch-of-its-life routine and one that's graceful and organic is all about the transition from one combination to the other. It takes a series of steps and ties them together in a way that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
I think Flow is the experience you want the reader to have. Most people want to read fiction where the words disappear into a stream of thought. All sorts of things can mess that up. Most of the time it is using too many words for description, too many dialog tags that cause the conversation to sound like they are taking long pauses, or ideas out of sequence.
