RhetoricVille

I’ve been working up some notes for my novel, the one I am going to write next month. But I am trying not to overplan. The idea is to write a discovery draft. Fast and furious.

But it’s a good idea to have some ideas stockpiled.

This should be a perfect way for me to write a novel, maybe the only way. I have a very well developed inner editor. Too well developed for a “creative writer.” This is why I teach and write non-fiction!

Anne Lamott (in Bird by Bird) has a hilarious image of picking up all your inner critics and editors, those nagging little voices in your head for whom nothing you write is ever good enough, and dropping them one by one like insects into a jar. Then you have dial that lets you slowly turn down the volume, until you can’t hear them anymore. But they are still in the jar, hopping mad. Once the volume is all the way down, you can go ahead and write a lousy first draft. But that lousy first draft is a necessary step to get to better second and third drafts.

The basic idea of NaNoWriMo is to write so fast that your inner critics are left in the dust.