I’m recognizing an increasing need, or feeling of need, to re-read my vomits and to start editing them properly. This feeling has always been there in some shape or form, but it’s getting stronger.
The original end-goal of the project was to complete 1000 vomits of 1000 words each, yes. That was the vaguest, simplest possible imagining of the goal of the project. But I knew in advance that the pursuit of such a project would have me encountering sub-goals that I had not and could not possibly anticipate. [1]
I think the biggest mistake about these vomits so far is a lack of proper bookkeeping. Of tagging and categorizing. I tried doing a little bit of it in the early stages, but it seemed premature at the time, so I avoided it. But I should have revisited it periodically. So that’s project management failure on my part. I have since learnt (mostly from colleagues, actually!) of the importance of periodical reviews. Things don’t seem different from day to day, but over weeks and months things can change quite dramatically, and it’s important to review them to make sure that you’re still aware of what’s going on, that you’re still in control.
So… what are the next steps for the 1000wordvomits project? I’m going to continue writing a post a day, because I feel like that’s the minimum commitment I can and should give to writing.
The next step is to add a read-old-vomits component, a catalogue-old-vomits component, a summarize-old-vomits component. And I can’t stop the project just to do those things, because then I’ll be stuck. I have to do them all at the same time.
Let’s go back over the origins of the project.
Initially, the goal was to have written a large volume.
Then I learned that it’s stressful and tedious and frustrating and annoying to try to write only in passionate bursts, so the goal was refined to include “write at least 1 vomit every single day.” [2] This made it easier for me to estimate when the project will be completed, and it reduced the unproductive self-flagellation I’d experience when I’d go days without having written.
So now I’m writing at least one vomit every day. With a single exception, I’ve done this for all of the last month. (And I’ve had several days where I’ve written more than 1 vomit a day, so the month of July 2015 has been the single most productive month for the entire word vomit project.)
Now. So far we’ve been talking about quantity of output. The original vague goal was to complete a quantity of writing. But buried in that goal was the assumption that quantity inspires quality. This vomit that I’m writing now is a manifestation of me validating that assumption. The quality does arise partially by itself– meaning, sheer volume of writing does inspire the subconscious to get better at writing. But if the goal is to become a better writer, I should do more than just quality. I should also make the “improve quality” bit deliberate and conscientious. I didn’t want to do THAT too early, because as I wrote in Letter To A Young Songwriter, there’s no point trying to be good when you don’t know what good is yet.
I still won’t pretend that I know what good is. But I know what not-good is, at least for the context of these vomits. I know that there will be some duds in the vomits that follow this one, but I would like there to be as few as possible. I would like to systematically eliminate not-good as much as possible. As my boss described, “pick the least-shitty option”.
And I’m now acutely aware that– if I keep going the way I’ve been going, I’ll be stuck in a bit of a cycle that doesn’t break a ceiling that I want to break. What is this ceiling? It’s when I keep repeating myself over and over again. I’ll naturally cross the threshold through sheer volume, sure, but what will take 2000 vomits might be condensed in 500 or less if I review what I’ve already done and isolate the good bits and the bad bits, and double down on the good bits. I have asked good questions in some of my earlier vomits that I haven’t answered yet. I should go back and answer those questions. I have made mistakes in earlier vomits that I will repeat, if I don’t become aware of them and teach myself to avoid them.
So again. I’m going to keep the word vomit project running by writing at least 1 vomit a day. The next thing I need to do is to add a component where I read, summarize and catalogue old vomits. Previously I was doing this 10 vomits at a time. I was thinking that this isn’t really all that useful an approach, but maybe I should just continue with that and complete that anyway. At 10 vomits a day, it would take me 40 days to catalogue/summarize all the vomits I’ve written so far– in a way that I still find a little suboptimal. But that’s fine, it’ll still be progress. And I might approach those summaries in a new way. Once THAT is done, or as I’m doing it, I’ll also start shaping the “sequences” or “buckets” of similar/related ideas. I’ll tag them.
Done.
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[1] If writing a novel was as easy as deciding to write a novel, then loads of people will have written novels. It doesn’t happen because there are all these intermediate things that have to be done, that are difficult, tedious, unpleasant.
When you start writing without a plan, you’re going to run into dead ends. Even when you DO have a plan, you’re going to run into dead ends, but then you’re slightly better equipped to back out and find another path to your goal. Or you might simply plan in advance to walk randomly and then back out of dead ends when you encounter them (that’s quite similar to the ‘plan’ for these vomits so far).
[2] Life lesson alert!