Never Look at a Reference Book While Doing a First Draft
Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft. You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.
STEPHEN KING
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 12:26AM
Reader Comments (2)
I completely disagree, Stephen. Maybe it's because I am multi-lingual (though English is my first language) but I often "forget" words. And if I recall correctly, this used to happen to me before I was multi-lingual as well. It will be on the tip of my brain as I'm writing. I will know what I *mean* to say but I won't be able to think of the word. Oftentimes, I'll even know what letter it starts with. Or how to say it in another language. Luckily an online thesaurus or translator is a 1 minute fix. I'll scroll down the list until I remember the word. Far from being a creative road-block, this provides creative RELIEF because there is nothing on this Earth more annoying than forgetting a word.
Everyone has a different process, but I'm on google all the time while I'm writing. And I find creative ideas all the time that way that sort of springboard off one another. Some people write 2000 ramblings words a day and need to edit out about 25% of their novel with they finish. Others write 500 a day that they've obsessed over every sentence as they go. And no not with their critique brain, with the creative brain. The part of your brain that says "and then what happened?" and the scene replaying in your mind from 100 different angles.
Totally agree! I teach my creative writing group kids the same thing, only instead of writing "Miami" I suggest writing "Largest City in Brazil." That way next week or next month when doing the re-write, you remember that you actually wanted Brazil, not Miami.
Sometimes it takes the kids a year or more to get over their love/hate relationship with the dictionary/thesauruses, but once they do, their writing takes off & they have so much more fun with it.