Attention writers!

[mousme]

For those of you on my flist, and I know there are many of you, who are writers and aspiring writers, I would like to point you to this post by drood on the nature of false starts: what they are, and why it's okay to delete things.

Bear in mind, for those of you doing NaNo: deleting happens after November. ;)

Comments

[toughlovemuse.livejournal.com]

Yes. After November. If you need to re-start in November, put a marker in the document to show you where the re-start is, and begin again.

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

HAH! I just realised.

After about the fifth one, every episode of Battlestar Galactica Season 2 has a false start - often lasting half the episode or more!


My job requires dialogue on demand. I begin with the expectation that my first five lines will be crap, but I need to *start*, and I always go back over it anyway, so it works out.

t!

[the-lich.livejournal.com]

I once did several thousand words of a "false start" when I did a novel about - get this - a submarine crew that is exposed to a deadly gas. Since we are talking about an air tight container, being exposed to a deadly gas is a sure ticket to the afterlife, so the story ended rather abruptly.

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

Hello.

What are you writing this November?

t!

[the-lich.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I am not using the stuff I did last year (my goodness, has it been one year already?) so I'll need to think of something else.