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| U of Louisville puts entropy to work... |
How do you plan a novel? I wish I knew; yet I keep trying. A
plan is a comfort even when I know that it is no more than a container. A
vessel that I fill with both my dreams and my commitment to chase them, a
fragile clay pot to stand against the universe’s inevitable urge to entropy and
all the myriad ways that manifests in my everyday life. For more on that go
read Pamela Zoline’s Heat Death of the Universe (PDF).
I was all set to blast through this novel in about three
months. The outlining is finished, and I’ve been drafting the new first
chapters to work with the material I’d already written. Then, a couple weeks
ago I got word that I’ve been invited to attend the Turkey City Writers’Workshop later this fall. I’m thrilled, and I really want to write a
shiny new story for it, so that I can get the most out of the workshop.
Yet, I don’t want to completely abandon my novel, so I’m
changing my plan. Instead of drafting it at white-hot speed, I’m going to work
on it super slowly. I’m going to use the “Don’t Break the Chain” method and
write at least 25 minutes – and no more than one hour – a day, every day. This
will probably get me about 350-500 words a day. At this pace, I should have a
finished draft in about six and a half months. Of course when I get to the
other side of this workshop, I’ll decide if I want to change my plan again.
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