Unwriting

Now that I’m heavy into the revision of my novel, I spend my alotted writing time doing a variety of things to it: writing completely new material, cutting and pasting sections, deleting a lot, and scratching my head during it all. I’ve been using the “timed” method of making myself work for a designated period every day, and accepting what comes out of that time. When I’m writing a first draft, I often count my words at the end of my writing session, then pat myself on the back if the result contains four figures.

I learned that using this method of measuring success while revising is rather disheartening. Almost every day this week, I’ve ended my scenes with fewer words than when I began to work. I know slashing all those extra words cluttering up the story is a good thing, but it’s still a bit of a disappointment to learn that all that came out of an hour of work were 450 words. I feel a bit as thought I’m “unwriting” my story for an hour a day.

But it is not NaNoWriMo season anymore. Quantity over quality was justified then. But now it’s time to flip the coin. And I’m off to unwrite some more.