I wish.
At least, it hasn't happened yet. But I did pull off some incredible feats involving turning out massive amounts of fiction.
I spent Hell Week finishing up my last paper for Hum2 and writing a script. 76 pages of script, to be exact. I've discovered that having crazy writing challenges such as NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy at the end of the semester gives one a great incentive to actually get papers done on time. This makes Hell Week easy academically. However, putting off writing for the challenge until schoolwork was done made my week an interesting one, full of discoveries.
Discovery 1: Writing papers is much easier than I had originally thought. Trying to pull plot out of thin air makes the brain hurt. A lot. I'm still recovering a week later, though writing fiction for Writing Week probably didn't help any.
Discovery 2: Procrastination can be helpful. Yes, helpful. But only if you're writing fiction. Procrastination on papers is bad. I learned that one last semester. (Plus it gets in the way of the writing for fun!) When writing fiction, however, and with a scary deadline hovering, procrastination followed by a sudden rush to actually accomplish your goal inspires really wonderful things. This time around I was greeted with feuding deities that caused the world I was writing about to almost be destroyed, an unfortunate soul to be given omniscience (which subsequently drove her crazy), and both of my main characters turned out to be not important in the least and nearly died. It was epic. And it was a myth about why the moon has phases. A 100 page myth, that is. Most of it was written in... 48 hours?
Discovery 3: It is possible to write 40 pages in 7 hours. Granted, they lack in the quality, but it is entirely possible. First drafts of many things can be done this way, especially if they are drafts of six page papers instead of giant scripts. I can never blame lack of time on late papers again.
Discovery 4: I should not be given coffee. During the writing sprint, I was given some coffee by my pal Kurt who works at Global Grounds. He knows I don't like coffee. He heard about my intent to write 76 pages in a very small amount of time. So he tried to disguise some coffee for me. He didn't succeed, which is all the better, because the few sips I had turned me loopy. It was... an interesting experience. One I don't intend to repeat. Coffee works miracles for some people when they have lots to do. Just not me.
Discovery 5: Things I read in class influence the way I write. This was evident to me in the short stories I wrote for Writing Week. I think it was mainly Dostoevsky and Flannery O'Connor. Maybe Kafka. (Also Terry Pratchett, but that wasn't reading for class.) It was interesting rereading what I'd written.
I'm sure there are more things I've discovered, but I can't think of which ones are relevant. I'm having fun exploring the writing process though, and I'm itching to write more. Despite Cassie's worry that I was going to fiction myself out, I seem to have opened the creative door in my head, and my passion for writing quality (as opposed to the quantity of NaNoWriMo and Screnzy) has been revived.
I can't wait to see what I come up with over the summer.
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