In the week of getting your ass to work, I think it is going well.
With the warmer days and months coming up, you are bound to go on holidays and vacations. Take day trips to the beach and enjoy a few of the upcoming 3 and 4-day weekends.
As well you should. I am not now, and never have been, a proponent for working every day. But, some of you are. There is nothing wrong with that. But every now and again, we all need a push.
Your push today comes in the form of working, yet again, on a writing prompt and directly with your WiP.
If you haven’t yet, you may want to check out the most comprehensive article about Kindle Vella. The post it valuable in and of itself, if you are thinking of joining the new platform. However, there are also little nuggets thrown in for those of you that just want to be a higher profile writer with a larger following.
Also, today’s writing prompt will piggy-back off of yesterday’s prompt. So if you haven’t completed yesterday’s writing prompt yet, you may want to do that (or just pretend you have).
THen, if you are ready, we have today’s writing:
May 04
Yesterday, you rewrote the last two paragraphs over again, twice. Today, I want you to take the worst set of paragraphs from the bunch and continue the story on using those.
Yesterday we took the best of the rewrites and continued working on the project to stay motivated and moving forward.
Some people don’t see the true, hidden value in this approach to writing. So, I’m going to show you. I also assume that you actually did the prompt from yesterday and have a completed scene or chapter using the best of the best from what you wrote.
Today, I want you to take the worst of the rewritten paragraphs and use those as if they were originally selected.
Just like before, you will continue writing the rest of the scene or chapter and this time you are using the “bad” paragraphs. Why?
If you write out the rest of the scene, you will notice that it takes a slightly different avenue. Even if you end up at the same place as yesterday, the path there is going to be different.
This can be due to a lot of things, and since I can’t see your writing, I can’t point directly at it.
Most common, though, are:
- New idea development happened from rewriting and choosing a better starting point.
- Your character took a turn because of a small change in their attitude, or outside factors.
- The new paragraphs gave you an inspirational moment that led to the new avenue.
There are quite a few reasons making a small change> It is these small changes, though, that the power of writing truly comes through.
Once you have your new scene or chapter written, take a look back at both of them together. Try to identify where the changes led you to and figure out how it is better for your story.
When you are done, you should have a better understanding of how a simple 2-paragraph rewrite can alter your entire book. For the better, hopefully.
