Take Your Time While Writing

I was taking a walk when an idea for a story came to me. I wanted to write the whole thing down right away before I forgot any of it. My initial thought was to try to keep it in my head long enough to make it home, where I could write it. I was so far from home that I knew I would lose much of it if I tried to keep it in my head that long.

So I pulled out my iPod Touch, which I just remembered I use to take notes on when I'm out. When I started a new note to write down my story, I realized that I didn't know the whole story. I hadn't thought of it all yet.

But holding my iPod, it allowed me to think more. I thought of the skeleton for the whole story. Then I went to the beginning and fleshed out the details of what would happen. So I started to type out the beginning, which is a time-consuming process on that machine. But there was a beauty to it. Since every thought took so long to record, it mulled over in my head for much longer. That made me think of it, the thoughts that came before it, and the ones that would follow it, over and over again, far more than I normally would.

In fact, during the time of writing that story, I was able to flesh it out thoroughly, write down every detail just the way I wanted to, and finished the whole thing right as I was a block from my house.

If I was at my computer when I got this idea and I had just started writing, one of two things would have happened: either I would have written the skeleton and left it alone or I would have written a very different version that would not have been as fleshed out.

Part of what I was doing was editing while I wrote. But the other thing I was doing was taking my time while writing. Although it is nice to be working at a fast pace, putting down ideas as they come to you, it is also nice to mull over your thoughts and really figure out what is just right. Try writing with a very slow method. Write with a pencil or with your thumb and see ow different the process and the results are.