Sunday, November 25, 2007

The Process

Recently, someone asked me if the writing process came easily to me; the answer was a resounding "God, no!" Getting out that first draft is like pulling my own teeth. (I am, apparently not the only one who feels this way.) I've also discovered that, for me, it requires actually putting pen to paper. I think, it seems, through the physical act of writing; only later can I successfully type words on the screen. I don't really mind. I use what works.

Now, we can hope it actually did work. I've finished writing the presentation that I will be giving Monday afternoon (though I do still need to go over it as a whole, edit out problems, and cut three pages or so). I also realized that the section of new writing that I was adding was not destined to be a part of the chapter I had thought, but rather wanted to be part of the introduction. So be it. It's words, and I'm adding them to the counter. Plus, removing those tricky elements from the (as-yet-unwritten) chapter makes the chapter outline itself more straightforward, and less terrifying, so that's another plus.

(By the way, the graphic for my counter widget doesn't seem to be working -- I checked the site that provided the code, and it seems to have disappeared. Until I find a new widget to replace it, I'm just going to be displaying the raw numbers, I'm afraid.)

5 comments:

hilary said...

WOOT!!
Look at the numbers go up!
Nicely done.

Belle said...

Good job! See I love to write, but doing academic stuff is like... walking through concrete walls. So there's writing for fun, and writing for serious. I love doing it, but it isn't always easy! The satisfaction comes when you look at a page (and for me too, it is a written page) and like what you read.

Anonymous said...

Dad's handwriting.

medieval woman said...

I hear you on writing out longhand! I have to write pages and pages of an outline (often with entire paragraphs written longhand) before I can sit and type it in.

Btw, this is where I got my new wordcounter:
http://languageisavirus.com/nanowrimo/word-meter.html

Anonymous said...

Wow, so there are people who DON'T feel that way about writing? Huh!