I don't delete anything, especially after losing a nearly finished draft of a story. I save save save save save. I have tons of drafts.
Sometimes it's hard for me to start writing out my ideas in front of the computer so I'll start them long hand and move to the computer, it may just be a few paragraphs long hand before I swith over.
Also sometimes I'll either print out what I'm working on and write stuff out long hand or just start writing an idea for the same story in a notebook but away from the computer to get a better perspective.
When I'm writing on the computer and I get stuck I usually space down until I can't see what I was writing and start over from the beginning (well not the beginning of the story, but of the scene) until the point I got stuck, and if I don't get unstuck then I'll start again like that. If I can't get unstuck I'll skip past where I'm blocked and write what goes next so I have a hole in the story. And then later I'll read the mulitple versions of scenes and rework it into one.
I get a lot of story ideas when I'm driving and then I lose them by the time I get someplace where I can write them down.
Hec is so cool.
If I was
really
cool I would've found an independent coffee shop. But expedience was the key - the Starbucks was two minutes away, had nice tables in the window, and I needed the whole lunch hour to write.
! Would you like to see the fifty LJ icons I made this week instead of writing my poem for my workshop?
My pantry full of marmalade? My crazy-quilt pillow top? Helllooooo to the avoidance.
Oh, my inner softy isn't going anywhere quick. The novel-in-process is a romance, and not a particularly angsty one as such things go. And I haven't plotted it all out yet, but I'm pretty sure my fantasy's heroine will live to find redemption, forgive herself, and make her world a more peaceful and just place. I'm all about the happy ending, 99% of the time. The WWJD is to keep me from writing happy little stories about nice people who are always nice to each other.
It worked. That's the bottom line. I wrote out the first draft of the scene, then I typed it, and all of a sudden the magic was with me.
Sssh. Don't let out the purple smoke.
My pantry full of marmalade?
Yeah, but that's blood orange mamalade - a thing of beauty and wonder.
I keep most of my hand-written drafts. I'm not sure what to do about the one I wrote on a muddied Nordstroms bag, however.
we had Willow deliberately mind-wipe Tara. Xander left Anya at the altar. Giles went through with the Cruciamentum. Wesley chose not to tell anyone of the prophecy about Connor. Angel locked Darla and Dru in the cellar with the lawyers and a bunch of innocent waitstaff whose mommies were waiting at home for them. Faith tried to frame Buffy for murder. Buffy ran away at the end of S2 without telling a soul
It's
all about the betrayal.
And did people think I was talking about deleting the first draft without keeping a printout? Of course you'd never do that. But yeah, Extreme Writing. I admired her courage.
