Draft 0: Icky the Vampire
I'm Joe Milan, Jr. author of The All-American and a creative writing professor at Hollins University.
This project began as a promise to my undergrads taking Fast Writing: if I was going to ask them to write boldly, quickly, and consistently, I would do the same. Here's the letter I wrote them before the semester started.
I'll be posting a chapter or more each week. The quirky details of how I'm doing this (and writing on a typewriter) will come below that. My only goal is to follow a process of writing quickly and (hopefully well) as practiced by 'fast' writers.
The goal is simple: finish the novel. Do it publicly. Hopefully learn to write quicker than I already do.
About the Process:
- POSTING: the chapters are posted here first, and will be followed roughly a week later on AO3.
- I'm using the writing process described by Dean Wesley Smith as "Cycling" in his book Writing into the Dark. To me, it seems closer to the process described by both Anthony Trollope and Stephen King, yet allows the conjuring of subconscious writing that Dorothea Brande describes when she talks about wake and writing and writing on appointment. I don't normally do this and I want to see if it will finally help me write quicker, and hopefully better.
- The Olympia SM3 typewriter is my primary tool in writing this project. I'm working on two books right now, (a poor decision on my part), and in the mornings at home I write on a different typewriter for my first project and in the office at work I use the Olympia for Icky. The tactile difference of typewriters allow me to focus more quickly, and I prefer dancing between the typewriter, editing by hand, and then finally inputting the thing into the computer.
- Around three to four hours a week maximum is what I got for this project. So, it's tough to force myself to get the pages out.