Random Acts of Writing

Yes I am weird and unique at writing a scene that may or may not go into a work in progress or one waiting to be the next in progress. 

I think I have mentioned before about how I do not write in order a lot of the time. I am also not the author who keeps track of my writing but page or word count. If that's you then that is great but I can't seem to do that very well. 

I am a multi failure author with trying to Nano in November. For those who have been successful God bless you and Nano but I have never been able to write 50K words in the month of November. And all I need is one more social type app to pay attention to. So I won't be attempting Nano again. 

So how is it I manage to write out of order by scenes?

It seems from having a full time job where I do some days manage to write on my Galaxy Note one partial scene at lunch break. Yes...I write on my phone. The note app is fantastic and so I will never go iPhone for that feature alone! Total Android girl here and no interest in MAC anything. But that's a side bar. 

I sit for 30 minutes on my lunch break...I bring my lunch to the hospital mostly so all I have to do is warm it up and sit to eat with my phone. A quiet corner in the cafeteria or outside or at my desk. I like the at my desk most. 

So first I spend the morning drive in to work thinking about what scene I know I will have in the story. Usually that may begin thoughts in my head where the characters begin speaking. Or where ideas there seem to be what may or may not come next in the story. But I whirl and idea and again Start on it while at lunch. 

To make the most of my time on my Galaxy Note...I type the story just like texting. The note feature does have a pen but I am fairly fast at it. I just type everything out with no indents for the sake of saving time. I mean a thirty minute sprint at lunch isn't long. So I don't bother with quotation marks or big punctuation thing. I so start new paragraphs but again no indents. I sometimes do not add dialogue tags which saves time as well. I just push to get the scene down. 

So if I don't finish a scene then I pick it back up that night when I write at home. Or I finish it at lunch the next day. And it might even take several days. But once it is done. That is a finished scene.

So when I am done I simply email the text to myself. Then later when I am working on my story on my laptop I go into my email and copy that scene and paste it where is goes into my document. If I am not sure where it goes then I make sure to title it and then past it at the bottom of my story so I csn grab and place it later. 

But...when I do add it where it goes...editing is required on several things. First I add the paragraph indentions and quotes and dialogue tags...all the things I didn't worry about when scrambling in 30 minutes to finish. And now in my document maybe a few things don't fit or go with what is happening in previous story. So I edit to make things fit even if it takes a bit of rewriting or changing exactly how something happened.

At times I have scenes but they don't connect to the chapter before or after them. So...I then think what do I need to happen for it to flow into that scene I already have. Weird I know but it so works well for me. Have I ever wrote scenes I didn't use? Yes. Many. But I save those scenes in another file in case I do end up using them in this story or another. Yep I do that too if the scene will work well there...just gotta change the names. That is sort of rare for me though. 

It's how I began stealing writing time no matter where I am. I did that at the soccer field with my girls when they were young. I do it while at the beach. I am prone to getting Carrick if I read in the car but I can do a little on my phone if we are traveling and I take Bonine to stay off being sick. I wrote a full scene the other day while standing in line to vote. I write in store lines and I write when I am anywhere that gives me a few minutes and its allowed. 

What I have found is those scenes that come to me are sometimes my best because what I keep playing around with in my head leads me to really nice exchanges between characters. Some of my best really intense scenes have happened this way. And I'd venture to say some of my shorter stories happened fully on my Galaxy Note. 

So I'll challenge you to see if this works for you. Come on just one scene. Think about your story in progress. There has to be a scene you know that will come much later on and you already know what will happen. So write it....yes now. See what happens and how you like the scene. If you let your characters speak in your head and you get it all down. I promise you will love the scene. So try it on a second scene another day. 

What I end up doing is writing those scenes where I do know what's happening or what's coming and saving them. Then I write what is needed in between to connect everything. You won't know if that will work for you unless you try. Just once give it a go.