About writing fast and what it means

So as I said in Friday's post, I was going to finally stop procrastinating and start writing my new contemporary romance. Within two days, I had the grand total of 18, 623 words on the page.

I'll wait until you pick your jaw off the floor before I move on.

Yes, I write fast. Sometimes, like the past couple of days, I write ridiculously fast. Generally, this happens more at the beginning or the end of the novel, when things are flowing along nicely. This time, it mostly happened because I've spent the past couple of weeks with these scenes growing in my mind, so they were there ready to slap down onto the page.

I can't write at this pace all the time. I find that an aim of 3000 words a day, five days a week works well for me (which over the course of four weeks, or a month equals 60,000 words – or two months to draft a gadda book, one month for the short contemporaries). Some weeks, I can easily dash down 5000 words a day. At the writing retreats that my friends and I hold in January, I mash down 50 to 60,000 words in the two weeks because for weeks leading up to it, my brain has been getting me ready to go, go, go, go, go. Plus, it's just a bunch of writers, with no family commitments or responsibilities. Splitting the cooking and dishes means there's not even as much housework to be done. Writing is the name of the game.

I first realised I could write this fast back in early 2003. Funnily enough, this all equates back to the initial drafts of the Dream of Asarlai trilogy and my decisions to a) write a romance and b) teach myself how to edit.

I decided I was going to write 60,000 word novels, and I thought about my writing and decided that yep, I could do a 60,000 word novel in a month. And I did. Secret Ones was written in February, Power Unbound in March, Rogue Gadda in April.

It's worth noting that this was during the period when I owned a second-hand bookstore, and so I was able to sit at my desk, waiting for customers, and bang those words out. The shop was open six days a week, so I was writing six days a week.

Ever since then, I've written fast. It's the best thing for my brain – when the story's ready to come I've got to get it out or I'll lose it. My brain tends to run fast in many things – when I start something, I need to finish it. When I get up in the morning I can't take time to relax – need to eat, shower, and get to work in one rush. Waiting for other people is the thing I hate MOST about committee work. Being slow is a real challenge for me in everything.

So that's why I think NaNoWriMo is a good idea for people to try out. You won't know if this is the way your writing should be done unless you give it a try.

The flip side of all this is – what happens to those words? Two different people asked me yesterday how many of those words I keep. The answer is – depends how much of the plot I keep.

I can find sections of Secret Ones and show you the EXACT words that I wrote in February 2003. That part of the plot or setting stayed, so those words stayed. When I edit, it's for plot. Very little of the wordage itself gets re-done because of the style in which I write.

My voice is pretty pared back. Simple. Straight to the point. I don't shy away from the use of cliched sentences – if that's the best, fastest way to get the point across, I'll use it. Some of my language can be a bit repetitive because of that and so at the final editing stages I will go through and look at that. My beta readers are also relied upon to pin-point me to misuse of language (Donna Hanson is my great de-juster).

But if you look at any of my edits – even the copy-edits of the novels from HarperCollins – the massive slashes of red pen are generally related to plot or character problems. There's generally not much done at the word level. I've been told I'm very 'clean'.

That said, I do know when I'm drafting that there are times the words aren't coming out right. I don't stop to think about them – I just use the bad selection now and I'll go back and pick them up later. I'm feeling that quite a bit in the current WiP, so it's possible that this draft may lose more words than normally happens. The opening pages in particular aren't sitting well at the moment and may involve extensive revision.

But on the whole, not only do I write fast but most of the words I write are usable.

This feels right to me. However, I know it's not the case for other people. Some will focus on the words at the very beginning and so for an entire day's writing will only put out a few hundred very carefully considered and probably extremely beautiful words. Others will go back and re-do sentences again and again until it's right.

I couldn't work like that. I shouldn't work like that. Nor should those people work like me.

And that's the other part of NaNoWriMo – consider it an experiment. Some people use it to re-establish habits that have fallen away, which is a good idea. But if you're not the type of writer who CAN hammer out 50,000 words in a month – it doesn't mean you've failed. You're just not that type of writer. You and I can stand and look at each other in wonder – never quite understanding how the other person works, but enjoying the end result just the same.