See Day 1 here, if you’re curious about why we’re 7 days in to November and I just started counting.
Today’s word count : 2545
My “brain dump” portion is relatively complete. As I explained to my daughter, this is the raw version where I just make sure that I get the information on the page. It’s not even what I’d call a rough draft because there’s no formatting at all (short of paragraph breaks).
Now I want to go through and flesh it out, add what I missed, clarify thoughts, stuff like that. I found myself explaining what was up with Fortinbras, why the story has to end with him, rather than on “The rest is silence,” although some productions might well cut it there.
My daughter is reading it each day with the following guideline: “Could you give this to a friend to read? Would your friend understand it? Would your friend want to see Hamlet after reading it?”
All three questions are important. I don’t want to make something that you would tell a student she must read. Then it’s just another form of homework. I’m aiming for “This was an enjoyable read all by itself, and now I want to go see this story performed on stage” rather than “I read this because you told me to and I’ll go see Hamlet if I have to.”