I've been a very bad writer. I haven't updated my blog in a few weeks. Bad, Bad writer. I have been committed to writing a hundred new words a day on my work in progress, but haven't done much more than the minimum one hundred. Bad, bad writer.
It often seems that my time drains away, but quietly, without the lovely (Alert! I'm draining!) gurgles my tub makes as the water pours down the pipes.
This isn't a problem personal to me alone. I hear similar refrains on the same theme all the time. So what does a busy writer do?
Enter: WRITE OR DIE!! Yes, it is as dramatic as it sounds. One of the folks on my loop mentioned it and I thought I'd check it out. Now, I'm not generally a middle of the road kind of gal. I like my baths parboil-hot, my iced coffees in icecream form. So I set the thing to Kamikaze-Evil.
Gentle readers, you may want to start out slow. Something I found out when write or die began erasing words I had already written, because it thought I was writing too slowly. When they say Evil, they don't mean the Diet Coke of Evil, let me tell you.
But the end result, is that yesterday, I shot from doing a little over a hundred words as has been my custom since the beginning of January, to 2037 words. That's yesterday. In two hours. After a full day of writing motions and orders to the court, and grinch-like nasty letters to other deserving folks.
Write or die may be evil, but I love them with all my little writer heart.
http://writeordie.drwicked.com/
What about you guys? Have you ever tried it? What did you think? Did it work for you?
OMG you're brave. I do not like Write or Die...it scares me like the dark and evil things lurking under my bed or in my closet in the middle of the night. Thankfully I'm able to churn out forward motion on my WIPs without it. But I hear a lot of people like it. A lot of people like base jumping and running marathons and other forms of self-torture...I be not one! (but congrats on the awesome word count...keep up the good work!)
ReplyDeleteI loved it! It kept me on track, kept me from fading off before simply putting ideas on paper/screen. Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeletelol! You're very welcome Linda! I'm glad you loved it. For whatever reason, when I know write or die is just itching to eat my words if I slow down, I get a lot more out. I think the tone of my writing is more urgent too, which is funny.
ReplyDeleteEmbee--I think you are pretty prolific without write or die, so no need to torture yourself. It works for us unselfmotivated types though...
Incidentally, please upload another chapter--I'm dying for more!