Embettering Your Craft

This was a panel at #Nerdcon 2015.

Process: do we write all at once,  do we rush towards deadlines.

You have to suck first, and that's okay.
Writing on the subway, etc.

Walking, not writing while thinking about work.

Make it a goal to finish something the next time you're at your keyboard,

Or leave yourself an outline for the future.

4 hour work day
We can try this. Maybe a decrease after this. So cut yourself off after this amount of time.

Outline is nice but sometimes limiting.

==Give characters a bio so we can know them well enough to put them in any scene or plot

Let's find the ending after we write to that point.

Check out Freedom, an app that blocks Internet with a timer, like 40 minutes.

Tell yourself one sentence counts as a day.

Or 250 words a day.

==Broad strokes. Get something down, even if it's shit, even if it's the most obvious thing, then you're at least WRITING.

==If you're first draft is terrible , so what? You have a first draft.

Don't be afraid to throw away a section and write it to fit the outline (what memories do we need to share? Can we actually share them?)

Don't be afraid to throw away a section and change the setting, or to change the thing before it.

==Not describing the world, experiencing it first hand. Sensory things are good.

Love tastes like strawberries

It was ghost quiet

Let the reader do the work