As I mentioned on Tuesday, this week I have a mini-goal to wrack up enough of a word count to bring my yearly total thus far to 200,000. As such I’ve been doing everything I can to get words down. I’ve been blogging (obviously), doing morning pages via 750Words.com, and repairing scenes in my supernatural romance. What I haven’t been doing is writing anything new.
Here’s my problem: since I’ve been home from out West, I’ve only been writing on my laptop. I type a helluva lot faster than I write by hand, so it only makes sense to use that speed. But for months now I’ve been writing in notebooks; thousands of words of long-hand.
Why is that a problem? Well, I have tons of my works-in-progress in notebooks…none of it on my laptop. For instance, I have the first four chapters of my epic fantasy novel on my laptop, then about a dozen chapters in notebooks. So if I want to continue on with that work-in-progress, I either have to skip a bunch of chapters in my Scrivener file in order to move on, or take the time to transcribe all the notebooks onto my laptop
Maybe I’m alone in this, but it would drive me absolutely insane to move on with the story without most of what I’ve written actually being in the Scrivener file. It’s just one of those things. I’d absolutely lose my mind. But on the other side of things, it will take me ages to transcribe everything that I’ve written in notebooks, and that will be time that I could have spent writing something else and wracking up word count. I suppose I could count word
s transcribed as words written, but that feels like cheating, since they’re technically words I’ve already written.
So I leave it to you, fellow bloggers and readers: should I take the time to transcribe, or move on to something else? If I take the time
transcribe, should I count the words toward my word count or not? Your thoughts are greatly appreciated!
No Page Left Blank 
I find that by transcribing hand-written portions of a draft, I’m able to apply second-draft level polishes to it – so, it is very worthwhile. It is a chance to re-read what you’ve done, and then build on it. My transcribed work is never the same as its original source. Since it will probably change, then I think you should count it on your word count.
I like the way you think…lol I’ve been thinking about it since last night and I think I should do it regardless, because the fact is that if I don’t, I won’t continue on with the story. And if I don’t continue on with the story, I’ll be mad at myself later on. So yeah, I think I’ll probably go with what you said and try to polish as I’m going. Thanks for the suggestion. 🙂