Daily Workflow Part 2 – AKA the Water Cycle

Last week we talked about what we do at the end of a work session, and this week we’re talking about what we do at the beginning of a work session. Those of you who are paying attention might notice that the beginning ought to come before the end, and wonder why we didn’t write these posts in the other order. We have our reasons.

Once we get settled in at our desks in the Writing Cave, or curled up with our laptops and dogs in the Auxiliary Writing Cave, there’s a certain amount of dicking around we have to see to. It’s union regs. Not optional. So we poke at Twitter and check on some web comics, read whatever articles are hanging out in our open tabs, and then we finally crack our knuckles and get down to work. And the first real bit of work that we do is to read through the previous day’s output. We do this separately, each reading our own work. (Kent gets to save his voice for later.) Any notes from last time get addressed first (aha! that’s why we talked about things out of order!). During this review we inevitably do a little fine-tuning of the prose, just little word picks to make the sentences clearer or prettier. Better. We find it’s a great way to warm up. It reminds us of where we are in the scene, and the fiddling around gets our fingers limbered up. And then all that’s left is to write for an hour or two, which then brings us back to Kent reading everything out loud. It’s like the water cycle.

A writing partner is someone who keeps you out of trouble with the union.