Hey all. I'm Megan, from B'more City (Hamilton/Lauraville). I'm procrastinating just now, and I thought I'd see how people feel about reading through what they've already written before adding more. On the one hand, my goal is 1st, to get the 50k words and 2nd to produce something resembling a plot. Logical consistency isn't too much on my radar. On the other hand, I find it hard to remember what I last did to my characters sometime, so I almost have to at least skim. Back on the first hand, I'm liable to edit like crazy if I reread because I'll notice every little thing so maybe I should just go ahead and add some words, however nonsequitous. Even if they aren't even real words. Yipes.
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61,973 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 17 39
The quick answer to your question is a resounding NO!
The longer answer is that I'm a perfectionist. If I stop and go back to edit (however minorly), I'll never get beyond chapter 1.
----------~ Sarah ~
Winner NaNo '07 - Twin Magic
Winner Script Frenzy '08 - Reincarnated
NaNo '08 - Do Over
108,301 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 17 53
It depends. If I'm struggling to get going again, sometimes I'll go back and reread. Sometimes -- and this is partly because I'm working on two different things at once, like usual -- I have to go back just to remember what I was doing. I have a habit of mentally writing things when I can't be physically doing it, like when I'm driving or something, so sometimes I forget that, oh, yeah, I haven't got that scene down on paper, even though I've already gone through it in my head. So I definitely have days when I open my word doc and think I'm further ahead than where I actually am.
If I know where I left off, though, or if I'm not switching back and forth, no I don't always go back and re-read.
Heather
----------2008: Winner!
Night Fire, complete at 91,367 words
Resistance, incomplete at 53,760 words
2009 Goal: 150k words, two complete novels
42,253 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 18 23
Sometimes I do to try and help maintain continuity.
TroutAngler
42,253 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 18 24
Sometimes I do to try and help maintain continuity.
TroutAngler
25,671 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 18 30
I find it helps to go back and read if I'm feeling blocked. Sometimes I go in and insert description or dialogue, which also ups the word count.
The key is not to take anything out. =)
----------November noveling since '02!
37,587 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 20 39
Um, yeah. The strikethrough is my friend and I try to not delete stuff, but I read back to figure out what to write next and I just have to pick a little. That said, I try to not read too much of it because I know I'll start revising and that is for Dec to Oct.
3,842 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 22 54
Yeah, I tend to do that too. Helps me get ideas sometimes.
----------43,784 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 02 44
Only for continuity and/or to unblock. (Or if I'm procrastinating a bit.)
The key, as someone else stated, really is to make sure if you go back, you're putting stuff in and not taking stuff out. I've gone back and done that, but sparingly. Too much and my Inner Editor thinks it's time for her to hit the stage.
----------2004 -
44,536 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 04 14
I'm rereading a bit and I just made a page of notes, I'm getting enough characters (siblings, boyfriends, nieces and nephews as well as main characters in the stories my protagonist starts and she named her car too :-) that it gets a little confusing and I'm in the middle of adding a complicated plot twist I had to research facts for, etc.
But my character is basically "Me," so I don't forget how many siblings there are or anything, just what I've renamed them. It's a little confusing because I have three brothers and three stepsons and I'm basically substituting my stepsons for my brothers; my two grandchildren are now my niece and nephew only I am shuffling names like crazy; using my brothers' middle names or nicknames they were called 65 years ago, before I was even born, LOL. That and boss and coworkers, friends and roommate, etc. and I was spending too much time making sure I had the right name for the right character.
----------35,199 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 04 40
I do reread, especially the opening sections, in order to remember where I was intending to go with the story, and to minimize drift in tone/characters. Also, as I go along, I change my mind about things or add stuff and have to go back and make sure it was that way all along. I do a little bit of editing sometimes, but only if it's painfully obvious to me. I don't go looking for things to revise! And I reread the bit right before where I stopped in the previous session, so I know where to go next.
----------My NaNo blog
2005: Die, Stupid Twink, die! (winner!)
2006: Infinity's End (winner!)
2007: Evil Tentacle Beasts from Under the Sea (winner?)
2008: Babylon Remembered (winner!)
2009: The Necromancer Diaries
21,850 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 07 07
I am making a conscious effort to not reread anything this month -- I will never move forward as much as I hope to otherwise. I will reread in December. :-) I keep the pace of my story through notes: at the end of each writing session, before I close my laptop, I just put down a couple sentences describing what comes next and what is in my head as I am writing. This way, when I pick up the next day, I just reread my notes to jog my memory, delete them, and start typing. It allows me to remember where I was without rereading actual content and fighting the urge to edit edit edit.
24,092 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 07 51
If I reread my novel now, I would delete the entire file and never look at it again. I can't reread during NaNo (I can't even reread while I'm writing a chapter of something non-NaNo related), or else I start hacking out large passages or trashing the whole thing.
----------"when i get a little money, i buy books. if any is left over, i buy food and clothes."
http://irishais.livejournal.com
52,120 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 09 50
Before I start anew, I skim over what I did the day before to help me get going on the new section. It only takes a minute or two. Sometimes the chapter went somewhere unexpected - I make notes in my outline but it still helps to review what I did.
I don't edit of course.
After the review, I am set in where I'm going and can push on into the new chapter.
Lee
----------Winner!: 2004 - String Fling, 2005 - Dark Matters, 2006 - Heaven's Homeless, 2007 - Against Nature, 2008 - Crack Bot
MLing for MD since 2004
51,253 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 12 33
I have a bestial inner critic that's very difficult to manage so I only re-read the previous paragraph when starting a writing session. Any more than that, and her jaws start snapping at my words.
Having said that, this inner critic of mine is extremely clever. She's started growling and snarling horrible things to my creative self: Your story sucks! You need me! You already wrote that, didn't you? Better look back and see... In December you'll have nothing but 50,000 words of CRAP.
I hate her.
10,790 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 13 24
I hear ya! I figure I'll skim just enough to try to make sense and otherwise just pound out the verbiage. I'll revise (if it's even worth doing so) in December and maybe get a short story out of it, but for me the primary benefit (if this works) is that I'll establish a habit of writing daily. So far my novel already sucks, but there are some good bits here and there.
71,323 / 50,000
Nov 5, 2009 - 15 31
I absolutely skim-read the whole file whenever I sit down to add to it, and re-read the last session's writing closely, so that I'm in the right mindset and ready to jump straight in; if I don't, it takes me a few pages of flailing around to remember where I was and what mood I was aiming for, and those sections always stand out to me later when I hit editing time.
The trick I use, though, to keep myself from editing instead of rereading, is to post each bit of writing to my Dreamwidth journal, privately locked to only me, at the end of the writing session. Then, I read that instead of the Scrivener workbook I'm working in (in fact, I usually start a new document in the workbook for every day's writing so I'm not distracted by previous days' stuff and have an accurate word count for each session; Scrivener makes it trivially easy to get a cumulative word count over multiple documents in a workbook).
Editing a post is just annoying enough, and makes me lose my place in what I'm reading, that I'm not tempted to rewrite as I'm rereading. If I notice something egregiously wrong (like a typo or a place where I wrote half a sentence and never came back to it) I can tab back over to the Scrivener workbook and insert or fix it, but I make myself flip back and continue reading on Dreamwidth, not in Scrivener.
----------Dreamwidth Studios: come to the dark side, we've got cookies. Special offer for NaNo participants.
38,334 / 50,000
Nov 6, 2009 - 01 04
I just remember what I did with each charcter last and move from there. If I were to reread my stuff I would do so many changes I would lose focus...lol
80,431 / 50,000
Nov 6, 2009 - 08 38
I will skim the last few paragraphs I wrote just to make sure of where I am when I start writing, but no, I don't read my work-in-progress.
As I write, I take notes on what might happen next, or anything I might forget. If I know something needs to come up later in the story, I jot that down in the notepad next to my novel file.
----------2005 - Sole Survivors (Win)
2006 - Spence (nope...)
2007 - War of the Survivors (Win)
2008 - Fractal (Win)
2009 - To Defy the Gods
20,187 / 50,000
Nov 6, 2009 - 14 21
I re-read. Everytime. Which looking at the advice from the other Wrimo's (or NaNo's... NaNites?) and comparing word counts - might be a bad thing. I need to stop. Hopefully going to a write-in this weekend will kick me of some bad habits and get some words on that counter!
Anyone going to the Shady Grove write in?
----------Tara Newman
MD and DC
"The castle loomed, as castles tend to do."
The Guardian - NaNoWriMo 2009
94,086 / 50,000
Nov 6, 2009 - 17 46
If I can't remember or figure out where the characters are going, I'll skim what has already been written.
15,375 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2009 - 06 36
Not only do I reread, but I sometimes do some massive edits. Usually when I'm stuck it's because what I was writing doesn't take the story in the direction I wanted to end up. I rearrange passages and it helps me get a flow which clears the block. The nice thing is I usually add more then I take out, so I've never ended up with less words at the end of the day.
36,600 / 50,000
Nov 9, 2009 - 08 44
Yes, I reread. I have to. Each of my chapters switches to a different character, so I usually need to read back to get a feel for what's going on and remember some of the character's traits that have developed over the course of the book.
50,060 / 50,000
Nov 10, 2009 - 18 03
I read the last paragraph I wrote so I get a quick jolt back into the book, but other that that, no. I only read that little bit to get the juices flowing.
50,061 / 50,000
Nov 10, 2009 - 18 20
I found that I never finished anything because I always went back to read what I've written. I would be astounded at the nonsense that I'd written so I would fall into this vicious trap of editing and before I knew it, there would never be an end to the madness and I would give up.
This time around, I've limited my read-back and I'm actually progressing. I shudder to think where my plot is going though. But someone said to me that a lump of coal will eventually become a diamond that can be shined and polished. There's nothing you can do with a pile of sand.
Hopefully, this is a diamond in the rough.
I'm at 35,000 words right now. But who even knows what horrors await me when I go back to edit it.
Scheherazade
Laurel, MD
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Tweet me @ischeherazade
Read my rants at ischeherazade.wordpress.com
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Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.
52,156 / 50,000
Nov 19, 2009 - 05 53
Oh, I just have to do it. It's a great way for me to remind myself of little quirks and plot devices I put in earlier (because I really have a terrible memory for such things, and I try not to make my outlines super-detailed). Also, it does help me when I'm blocked and need to think of where to turn next.
Even if I'm not blocked, sometimes it helps me remember the mood that I was trying to create the last time I was writing. Like, if I had to leave my computer right in the middle of a dramatic fight scene, rereading it gets my heart racing again so that I can continue writing exciting things.
Plus, I really like the way I write, so sometimes I go back and reread what I've already written because it's fun to read. =D
----------"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
--Oscar Wilde