Letting your readers watch you write

[Steerpike]

Interesting:

Would You Let Readers Watch as You Write Your Book? - GalleyCat

Readers can watch her writing in real time, make comments, offer feedback, and so on. Would be interesting, in a way, just to see how things turn out.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Yeesh. Insofar as I have any readers, I don't think I'd ever do this. Some pretty bad stuff comes up in early drafts.

 

[Devor]

. . . . . awkward.

 

[Ankari]

Yeesh. Insofar as I have any readers, I don't think I'd ever do this. Some pretty bad stuff comes up in early drafts.

You can almost guarantee she will not be writing her first draft. I have a feeling it will have been her second or third draft. She is using Google Docs for this project. All she has to do is copy a couple lines at time from a previous draft. Done.

 

[PrincessaMiranda]

That sounds scary actually. To have your audience ruthlessly judge and criticize before you even have your draft finished. Sounds like psychological torture to me. Then again I am an extremely private person. I don't even like to clean if theres someone else in the same house as I am.

 

[Ameronis]

If I were to do that, I'd probably come away from the computer each night, crying bitterly. Constructive criticism's ok, but then things could get ugly if some jerk shows up and insists on needlessly slamming your work. It could either be a good strengthening exercise, or a good way to bring yourself down if you feel that your life is too happy at the moment..

 

[PrincessaMiranda]

If I were to do that, I'd probably come away from the computer each night, crying bitterly. Constructive criticism's ok, but then things could get ugly if some jerk shows up and insists on needlessly slamming your work. It could either be a good strengthening exercise, or a good way to bring yourself down if you feel that your life is too happy at the moment..

I agree, there are too many people out there who use the anonymity of the internet to make people feel horrible. Trolls.

 

[Steerpike]

As noted in this story, she has started the novel:

Watch a novel being written 'live' | Books | guardian.co.uk

I clicked on the Google Docs link to see what she had so far. It was interesting to scroll through.

 

[Philip Overby]

This is akin to watching someone do National Novel Writing Month without a clue what they're going to write. I think it's an interesting experiment. How when we aren't allowed to edit, we may just produce rather bizarre stuff that we normally wouldn't. It could be a way to see how you can really function as a writer when everything is stripped away. Of course, I wouldn't recommend this for anyone unless they want to "strengthen their writing muscle." Any writing is good writing practice I think.

I've been doing something similar (with only FatCat really challenging me) in the challenges section. I'm writing 30 stories in 30 days just to see what comes out. http://mythicscribes.com/forums/challenges/5345-crush-your-soul-30-day-endurance-challenge.html We're both still trucking along so far. Is it all good? Probably not. But I'm enjoying it so that's all that matters to me at the moment. I'm sure she's enjoying her experiment as well.

I think you learn a lot from yourself as a writer when you just let your guard down and just write what comes to you.