The Healer and the Pirate

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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Writing Wednesday - Retyping

How's my crazy plan going? So far I've done 2.75 hours of editing on Kinyn and 3.5 hours planning my next project. Not bad.

This section typed on my cell phone a month or two ago:
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I struck upon this trick by accident. I never bring my laptop to work. One lunch break, when I wanted to edit my Step 3 (?) of my Snowflake for Chosen, I only had a handwritten copy. With my scrawling, the handwritten copy is not condusive to editing! I had written it quite a while ago, but lazy evening (and weekend!) Julie didn't type it for lunch Julie to edit.

Long story short, I was lacking motivation, so I typed the whole thing on my not-entirely-dumb phone (Samsung Comeback) and emailed it to myself. And as I typed on my thumb keyboard I had plenty of time to think about each sentence. If a plot idea was stupid, no way was I going to take the time to type it out by thumb! Whereas when I pencil-edit a typed draft, I might hesitate to change things around too much (more retyping!) and evwn when I make changes, sometimes I miss typing them in later. So I ended up with a stronger outline than when I started. It also felt more 'fun' because it was more like texting than work (90+ percent of what I write by hand is related to my writing which, while fun, is still work).

So again, the main takeaway seems to be to do something a little different if you have to. I think my challenge with Chosen is that I wrote this novel already, 1.5 times at least! So it's hard to keep planning interesting.

I don't know how broadly retyping with thumbs can be applied. With a full manuscript, it would take ages...and would likely introduce a substantial number of typos. But with a page-long outline it doesn't take long, and the outline's plot almost certainly trumps form. I found it worthwhile, but I'm not even sure I'd do it for a 4-page outline.
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So, what do you think? Not TOO many typos... Looking back, I still think it's good advice, but I'm not sure I can take the time with my 7 (!) page outline, which is where I am now.

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