5 Days To Go: The TSOD Meets the RPWSSFG

(The TSOD is something that a few Nano’ers came up with; it stands for “the travelling shovel of death.” It’s a NaNo challenge to incorporate it into your book somehow. RPWSSFG is an initialism I made up on the spot to stand for “redneck pirates who sing songs from Grease,” referring to an earlier post)

I have made a promise to myself. This promise is that my novel will be as ridiculous as possible. The only serious bone in my novel’s metaphorical body will be the humerus. (Ha ha. Lame humor. Just another Saturday morning.)

Will a character be killed with a shovel? Yes. Will I sneak the RPWSSFG in there? Absolutely.

The thing is, if you take your first draft too seriously, it’s no fun. Maybe it could work out for some people, but I know from personal experience that first drafts are a pain in the rectal area if you try to make them excellent. Especially if it’s a NaNo/TWWE/Script Frenzy draft. If you plan on taking a long time to perfect your first draft as you go along, then that’s fine; if that works for you, then keep it up, do what you gotta do :D That method doesn’t work for everyone, though. Personally, I know that if I don’t speedwrite that piece of feces, it’s not going to get done. I’ll just spend forever tinkering on it, occasionally writing something, then forgetting about it again for a while.

Later drafts are another story entirely. (Pun completely unintended. I only left it there because I thought it was terrifically lame.) First drafts are the drafts you lock in the drawer, hungover and mortified at what just spewed forth from your head. The thing is, though, that that’s the point. You just need to get it done and forget about it (unless you plan on going through it and editing/revising the whole thing. In that case, I pity your soul. You are a brave person and I respect your courage in perusing The First Draft without the intention of laughing at it.)

I know some writers who can never finish a first draft because they get worried about the quality halfway in, delve into the beginning to edit it, and never come back out. Speedwriting is an exercise that helps to stop those impulses, or at least teaches you to ignore them.

So if you think we’re crazy, you’re probably right, but however unlikely it may seem, there’s a method to the madness.