A few weeks ago, I tried something new, and it really sped up my drafting. After reading about how--doing basically the same thing--Ava Jae over at Writability Won NaNoWriMo In 9 Days , I thought I'd post this for my writer friends who are struggling to make their word count. I typically write very clean, meaning I'm a picky polisher in my initial draft. It's closer to publish-ready than most, but it takes me forever. Besides research, the main thing that slows me down is coming up with fresh ways to describe emotion, movement, facial expression, etc. I decided to try something different if I found myself really stuck. ( You know....when you sit there for twenty minutes , debating about a single phrase or word, and draw nothing but an icky cliche or a total mental blank. :P ) I started putting a note-to-self ( e.g. Show Harrison's outrage. ) or a cliched/bad version of what I was aiming for in brackets, and then letting go and moving on. I've left...
