I'm a slow writer. Yes.

And not just that, I'm a perfectionist as well.

I'm that girl who constantly goes back to a last paragraph.

Or a last chapter.

To tweak something. To scrap something.

And it makes me SLOW as HELL.

In the end, I either get bored of my story and toss it to a corner, or I stall and writers block sets in.

It's not a very great experience. Trust me.

That being said, I've decided to use the FAST DRAFT method.

Just like the name implies, fast draft is a way to put down that first draft in less than no time: fourteen days, twenty one days, twenty eight days, etc. It's important to know that Fast drafting doesn't promise a perfect-ready-to-be-published-book. In fact in my opinion, I think there are three end results. You can either have a good book, or a half good/half bad book, or a bad book. And all of these results are great 'cos you can work them up to something perfect. Fast drafting is a way to overcome fear, to get rid of that inner editor, and just write. It gives room for no excuses. It's tasking, yes, but I'm sure it's also exciting and worth trying.

So for the next eighteen days, starting from tomorrow, I will be giving myself prompts that will lead me to my end result. A few of these prompts are ideas from some of my favorite authors, and others are mine. I will endeavor to post my progress update on a daily, that should help keep me motivated.

Please feel free to join in if you'd love to. What better way to spend this lock down period?

1:10pm
DAY 1 CHALLENGE

And it has begun! (doing some weird movement with my legs and hands a.k.a. dancing).

No!

Don't!!

Don't try to imagine it.

I'm a terrible dancer!


With no further ado, here's the challenge for today:

Task 1: Brainstorm my story idea
This is basically just me getting to know my story a little better. Why is my character going through this? Why did she take this decision? What if this? Why not that? That kinda stuff.

Task 2: Create a story playlist.
I've never done this but, Tomi Adeyemi says it's a really great way to get into stories. Especially when there's no inspiration, the playlist gets you inspired. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm going to try it anyway.

Okay I'm off to brainstorm and create a lit af playlist that relates to my story idea.

The problem with these challenges is the person eventually chickens out halfway. Don’t argue with my opinion until you see the end of the task. Thinking of writing books, I can stitch my daily journal together; there, I now have my own summarized autobiography.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR DAY 1:

TASK 1 - Completed
TASK 2 - completed

I had so much fun creating the playlist. For now I have 12 songs on it. Probably along the line I would add more.

DAY 2

"If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained" — Neil Gaiman.

The challenge:
Task 1: Create a pinterest board.
This is a way to have a visual version of my story. The board will include character inspo, setting inspo, dialogue, costume inspo, etc. Just whatever kind of pictures that fit into my story.

Task 2: Braindump
Braindump literally means taking every idea I have in my brain about this story and dumping it on paper. (this is probably the lamest definition ever, but yeah, you get what I mean). I already have scene ideas and dialogue, will put all that down. Doesn't have to be in any kind of order.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR DAY 2

TASK 1: Completed
TASK 2: Completed

Today's challenge was great. Braindumped and created my Pinterest board. Can't say which task I enjoyed most.

Looking forward to tomorrow's challenge!

Annnnnnnd, it's DAY 3!!!

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” ― Terry Pratchett

THE CHALLENGE:

TASK 1: Put my story in order.
The braindump from yesterday has a number of scenes I think might take place in the book. I will just pick those and put them in an order of occurrence. I might decide to change things when I actually start writing, but this will serve as a guideline.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR DAY 3

Task completed.

"Don't guess. Do the research" – Ellen Brock.

And Ellen's quote leads me to DAY 4 challenge: this is the part I think is most fun 'cos it involves seeing a lot of YouTube videos, reading blogs, skimming through memoirs etc. Just anything that gives me first hand information of people's personal experiences that relate to my story. Historical events and all that. I did a bit of research when I first got this story idea, so this is like a continuation.

PROGRESS REPORT:
task completed.

DAY 5

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.— Louis L’Amour

Finally I'm through with the outlining and planning process, time to start the actual writing.

THE CHALLENGE:

Write 15 pages.
There's plenty of gaps atm in the story, but I'll start from anywhere (end, middle, or beginning), the gaps will eventually close up.

PROGRESS REPORT:

I wrote 17 pages as against 15

DAY 6

THE CHALLENGE:
Write 17 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Today was quite busy and crazy hectic, but I found time to write this night.
It's presently, 11:45pm.

Battling sleep wasn't an easy feat, but, I made it!

Yup. I wrote 20 pages.

I'm totally going to see this thing through.

DAY 7

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” ― Jodi Picoult

I'm almost half way through this challenge, and so far it's been pretty good. I'm actually enjoying it more than I thought I would.

TODAY'S CHALLENGE:
Write 16 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

DAY 8

THE CHALLENGE:
Write 20 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed

DAY 9

Half way through.. yaaaay!!

TODAY'S CHALLENGE WAS TO:
Write 22 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

DAY 10

Today's challenge was to write 18 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
I wrote 16 pages. I'll make up for the extra 2 tomorrow.

Nice one OP. So what's your target? I mean how many words? I think my biggest accomplishment with these kinds of challenges was when I wrote a 7,000 word story in 5 days back in 2016. Yeah, that's not much, but I am a slow writer, and I felt great when I completed it.

kayo80:
Nice one OP. So what's your target? I mean how many words? I think my biggest accomplishment with these kinds of challenges was when I wrote a 7,000 word story in 5 days back in 2016. Yeah, that's not much, but I am a slow writer, and I felt great when I completed it.

Thanks Kay. My target is about 50k words.
I'm a slow writer as well, so I totally get what you mean. This is my first time trying a challenge like this, and mehn, I don't remember the last time I wrote so much words in just a few days. It feels good. I feel good.

DAY 11

Today's challenge was to write 23 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed. I wrote a total of 27 pages.
I use page counts instead of word counts because that's what fast draft is about. It's the pages. And I find it much more convenient.

theOGN:


Thanks Kay. My target is about 50k words.
I'm a slow writer as well, so I totally get what you mean. This is my first time trying a challenge like this, and mehn, I don't remember the last time I wrote so much words in just a few days. It feels good. I feel good.

Wow! That's great.

Keep it up dear. Just write, you will edit later and all the gaps will be filled. Trust me. It's never easy writing and editing at the same time. . . Your challenge is just eight days left... wow... Way to go. way to go ( applauding)

Creeza:
Keep it up dear. Just write, you will edit later and all the gaps will be filled. Trust me. It's never easy writing and editing at the same time. . . Your challenge is just eight days left... wow... Way to go. way to go ( applauding)

Thanks for the encouraging words.

DAY 12

Today's challenge was to write 24 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

DAY 13

I wasn't able to post an update on yesterday's challenge, so here it is:

Write 27 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Shame on me I couldn't get up to 27, but I wrote 24. Will add the remaining pages to next challenge.

And to today's challenge:

DAY 14:

Write 25 pages.

So I'm writing 28 pages today.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

theOGN:
DAY 13

I wasn't able to post an update on yesterday's challenge, so here it is:

Write 27 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Shame on me I couldn't get up to 27, but I wrote 24. Will add the remaining pages to next challenge.

And to today's challenge:

DAY 14:

Write 25 pages.

So I'm writing 28 pages today.

Nice. You are really motivating me to write more. Keep it up.

DAY 15

The challenge:
Write 19 pages

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

DAY 16

2 more days to go!!!

The challenge:
Write 26 pages

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

kayo80:


Nice. You are really motivating me to write more. Keep it up.

Thank you.

This is inspirational. You know, a few days ago, in my dairy, I was advising if one of the mods in the literature section could create a thread like this where writers can paste their daily word counts. I've seen it done on a foreign board one of my mentors frequents.
It feels so good to seeing what you're achieving.
If I may ask, in what genre do you write?

pabon:
This is inspirational. You know, a few days ago, in my dairy, I was advising if one of the mods in the literature section could create a thread like this where writers can paste their daily word counts. I've seen it done on a foreign board one of my mentors frequents.
It feels so good to seeing what you're achieving.
If I may ask, in what genre do you write?

Hey, thank you!
Yeah, it will be cool to have something like that here.
I write contemporary fiction most of the time.

DAY 17

THE CHALLENGE:

Write 21 pages

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

DAY 18

LAST DAAAAAAAAYYY!!!

I'm super excited.

The Challenge:
Write 28 pages.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Task completed.

I'm glad I decided to take this challenge. Not going to lie though, at some point I became super lazy, and there's this one day I just didn't feel like sitting down to write. I spent the entire day rereading an old book (and I'm not a fan of rereads, even if it's my favorite book. I'd rather pick up a new one). Long story short, when night came and I realized I couldn't go to sleep without writing anything, I got up and wrote, and wowza, the words started flowing(it's one of those days I had an uncompleted challenge).

So yeah, I'm glad I did this, and I'm glad I pushed myself because at the end, I came out with a 55k-word-half-ugly-half-fine-book.

Lastly I'd like to say thank you to everyone who supported and encouraged me in one way or the other.

Gracias