How Fast of a Writer Are You?

writer Lily Neon Vagabond
Posted on by Lily Blaze Posted in Writing, CommentaryTagged , , , ,

I’m a sloooooww writer. My typing speed is 45 words per minute, on average. However, typing is easy. Crating, now that’s where it gets hard and time-consuming.

So, my actual writing is like this:

the speed of a fast writer

Crafting my ideas is more like this:

What it looks like when writing is slow

A few years go, I agreed to post daily word counts in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I ended up tying 70,000 words in a month. And you know what? By the end of the month, I had the crappiest manuscript and I become physically ill for the next month. And I wasn’t directly participating in NaNoWriMo! Never again.

Let me explain. As I’ve mentioned on my blog, I have MS. Since I was diagnosed in 2004, I’ve thought many times, why oh why didn’t I pursue writing when I wasn’t chronically ill? If this was 20 years ago, things would be very different.

I’ve seen disabled people all over social media who participated in NaNoWriMo with no problems. Yay for them. For myself, it’s a problem, and I’ve long-since accepted that fact.

Second factor, which is as important, MS slows down central nervous system functions. I have to think about things. A lot. Again, just the way it is. I’m not making excuses, just stating facts.

Writer Fermentation Process

I have a process so I can write without MS blocking me. It’s a slow process, but it works for me.

I get an idea for a story. I let it ferment. The longer I allow a story idea to ferment, the better the crafting. This is mainly why following NaNoWriMo failed for me. A 70,000 word manuscript with zero crafting. It was unreadable.

Once an idea has fermented enough, whole sentences and lines of dialogue will just come to me. It’s really nice when that happens, and super exciting.

New Yet Old Idea

The story idea I had at the beginning of the year, all about a Pierrot, is just starting to feel fermented enough. The timing sucks, because I’m wrapping up the editing that The Ash Garden needs right now. But soon, very soon, I’ll start crafting my Pierrot, a blood-thirsty being on a quest.

The race is on. We’ll see how fast I can go from editing to writing another novel.

What? I never said I’m a slow editor.

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