Suzanne, my dance instructor, will lead us through a routine several times at a nice, manageable tempo. Just as I'm feeling pretty good about it, she says, "Let's speed it up," and the whole thing just falls to pieces. The secret, she says, is to relax, make your movements smaller and keep your feet directly underneath yourself. And if I can remember to do all that, it works.
When writing a first draft of a story, I don't have much trouble with working in smaller bits. It's seems perfectly reasonable to grab fifteen minutes here and there to dash off a few paragraphs. While it's preferable to have a block of time, I can manage writing in a catch as catch can manner. Maybe because I can smooth things out a bit when I go through for a quick clean-up before I submit to the group. After all, it's just a first draft.
Revisions have been another issue. For some reason, I have convinced myself that I need substantial blocks of time to work on rewrites. I'm not sure why. Probably more as an excuse to not work on them, truth be told. But that excuse goes away today. It's time to take Suzanne's advice and apply it to this part of my life.
What excuses do you make for yourself?
2 comments:
What a great analogy.
I like large chunks of time to revise, because I feel like I have a better overview that way. But, like you, my time comes in snack size rather than the all-you-can-eat buffet size :-) I'm working on accepting this fact...
I'm struggling with the revise of Darkwing as well. The flowchart which the group convinced me to do has helped. As I change a portion as noted on the outline, I check it off in red. Feeling of accomplishment in bite sized pieces. I still feel like a need distance after this process to look at the whole thing but I'm afraid I'd have to do it from outer space.
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