Lucid Pantsing: The Experiment

Once upon a happy Nano, I wrote a novel in two weeks.  I knew a lot of about its world, I knew some about the characters, and I had a premise.   The only plotting I did was what I would write the next day.  The work suffered from moderate structural disorganization, but still it is salvageable.   That novel still haunts me to this day, and so does that Nano success.

I want to recreate that experience, but with fewer disorganization problems.  I want to find a way to work with my ADD but also control it, so that I get the best of both worlds--the creativity and joy of discovery coupled with the power of focus.  What I am hunting for is a bit like lucid dreaming, but with more readable and publishable results ;-).

That is why I decided, a bit belatedly, to do a Nano experiment for 2013.  This experiment is not just about finding that sweet spot between planning and pantsing.  It is also about recording and showing how an ADD mind works while writing. 

My goal is to perform minimal prewriting, no outlining.  Just write a novella.

My goal is post every chapter--after some moderate editing for readability.  I need the editing, because besides ADD I also have tachyphemia, which plays mind games with my writing on the sentence level.  So my editing is more than tweaking commas.

My goal is to analyze this technique, successes, and problems, and then blog about all that.

My goal is revise this novella and post that too--chapters and analyses.  After all, one of the main things I am shooting for is a technique that requires freedom of creativity but minimal revision, or in other words, my own way to Heinlein's Rule Three (no rewriting).

Finally, my goal is, if this results in a publishable project, to self-publish it.

And I want to do this in public.  My hope is that will create some accountability, so my brain doesn't act like a magpie and go after the next shiny thing, leaving me with a few chapters and scattered notes and no novella.  

So that is it.  In a nutshell, this blog is more about the analysis than the novella, and Nano 2013 is too.