Mind Mapping

So, the other day when I was musing about a potential participation in November's National Novel Writing Month, a dear and wise friend of mine sent me this email.

After reading your post about writing a novel and not editing throughout the 30,000 words, I wanted to send you the link to Daphne Grant’s posts. They’re great—and she’s got lots of tips about mind mapping and NOT editing while in idea-flow mode:

http://www.publicationcoach.com/500th-anniversary/

Hugs,

Becky

What with the Atlas-sized globe of grading on my shoulders at the end of last week, it took me a few days to click the link and read about ways to speed up my writing, but on Sunday, I finally did.

If you read the post that the above link sends you to, you'll get a few tips on writing faster.  One of the biggest strategies that this woman pushes is something called "mind mapping."  If you're an elementary school teacher, there's a good chance you've already heard of this.  You probably teach it.  In education, we tend to call it a pre-writing "web."  In any case, I clicked the link and read all about mind mapping and all of the benefits of it, and I won't lie to you, I was somewhat unconvinced.  Sure, mind mapping was probably wonderful if you spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling or playing Candy Crush on your phone because you can't think of where to begin.  But if I already have the ideas stewing in my brain, does it really help?  Does it make my writing faster?  Does it make it better?

So I started to try it.  I used it on my post Monday about suburbia.  I used it on my post yesterday about budgeting.  I even used it to create my budget.  See:

In doing so, I spent probably 5-10 minutes creating each mind map, and then I made sure not to edit anything until after I was done writing the full piece.

My take thus far?  Inconclusive.  I really can't tell if the writing is faster...or better.

It doesn't help that the two days I've used it happen to be the least-rushed, most disrupted days of writing I've had this month.  It also doesn't help that I spent a chunk of my writing time resisting the urge to edit before completion or staring at the wall, wondering if this mind mapping business isn't more trouble than it's worth.  But this woman, Daphne Grant, she lives by her mind maps, and this dear friend who emailed me, Becky, she trusts Daphne Grant's advice enough to send her blog my way.  So, I've decided to stick with it.  If nothing else, it might be valuable tool to keep me on track as I write my novel next month.

(ps. I decided to write a novel in November.  So...yeah.  Don't be surprised if the blog posts are few and far between, or if I opt out of fun things sometimes.  I promise I'll share at least some of the writing with you when I'm done, but understand that 50,000 words in 30 days will probably produce something far less crafted than I'm used to sharing.  So, critique with kindness.)