Situation One: You're working away on your National Novel Writing Month manuscript and you get to this bit where you need information you don't have. Do you:- Drop everything and spend enormous amounts of time researching the subject?
- Spend a few minutes making a couple of notes about what you want to do in this spot, leave it for December, and use your precious NaNo hours to continue writing from that point?
Situation Two: You're struggling with a spot in your NaNoWriMo manuscript. It is brutal. Do you:
- Sit there most of the morning until something comes to you?
- Make a couple of notes about what you want to do in this spot, leave it for December, and use your precious NaNo hours to continue writing from that point?
Yes! Yes! The answer is 2!
The place holder is the rushed, rapid writer's friend. The best thing to happen to work time since the 8-hour shift. At least, I think it is. I've never been good at using place holders. Researching obsessively is much more my thing. And then I end up not using the information, anyway, or deleting whatever I managed to come up with. But today I used a place holder twice. The idea came to me before I'd wasted too much time. So all good.
And How Is NaNo Going For Gail?
Even though today is Day 7 of National Novel Writing Month, and in order to meet the monthly goal of 50,000 words a writer has to have written a bazillion by now while I have only written 3,641, I am feeling good about my NaNo experience to date. See, I've only had two and a half real days (more or less) for writing, during which time I wrote an entire chapter and started another, which is a lot of work for me.
And it's very early days for me to have latched on to that place holder thing. If I can keep that up the rest of the month, I'll be on fire.
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