Examining My Own Process

I have started a process notebook.  On the advice (and assignment) of a novel writing teacher, I have begun to write a daily journal of what I am writing and how I am feeling about it.  I've set myself a goal of five pages a day, and, at the end of my session I plan to collect my thoughts and jot them down.

This week I was re-writing the third story in my novel of linked stories.  I am sure I generated five new pages, in bits and pieces, but the new production of pages definitely fell off.  Two of the days were holiday--the Jewish New Year--and I didn't write.  That left three days of work.  Well, I finished the story.  I am reasonably happy with it.  I will let it sit for a while and then re-read it to see how it feels.

This is what I also realized, something I knew but didn't articulate.  I find re-writing a lot easier than producing new material.  My imagination takes off around the scenes I created, and I can open up, enrich and deepen the material I wrote.  But re-writing doesn't substitute for generating pages.  And now I know that every day, even if I am re-working a story or part of the novel, I need to start my day with free-writing new work.  I have to remind myself that I can let those first pages come out as stupidly as they wish.  No one is going to rush out and publish it as it is.