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» Hatrack River Writers Workshop » Forums » Open Discussions About Writing » 11-12-07 Did you write?

   
Author Topic: 11-12-07 Did you write?
rstegman
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11-12-07 Did you write?

As an attempt to embarrass me into writing and give me a short term goal, I post these notes each week. I also hope that it will help others to get something done during the week. At least I hope it works for you.

As for me, Yes, I did write, and I did so purely because I realized this note was coming up. I felt I had a reason to have something to brag about.
I opened my latest work in process about a wood worker, some weed fairies and some plant fairies. I read through it, and edited a bunch of what I had. I saw a problem and edited to remove that problem, but have to go through it again to cure the problem completely. The weed fairies hate machines and I have the wood worker using some machinery for some intense work, and there is no reason for it in the story. I have to add that in.
With all the work I did, I added only three hundred and thirty three words. That was actually a relief because I was afraid I would lose my word count. It is sitting at 1929 words, Not much production the past few weeks.

I have had fun with my story ideas and several could well be complete short stories if they were edited right. I tend to get carried away some times. I generally write between 50 and 70 single spaced pages of this drivel every month. It is fun that I get to work on a new story every day, and long ago, it stopped being a chore. The only real quality improvement I see is that lately they are tending to be more like short stories rather than just telling what the story is about. I have a club meeting Thursday won't be able to post that day. I have to make up for it. It is nicer to get ahead, ahead of time, but that does not always happen.

My name list keeps growing. It is now 1262 Words- and on Page 30, single spaced. Most junk mail names can be used as a first or last name. for my story ideas, I don't do last names as I am not into developing characters. About a fifth of the time, I don't even use a name, using either he or she. The names are added if I see there is a question of who is saying or doing what. Even so, I still need a number of names. I don't need a thousand names, but it is a little bit of fun to collect them. I don't use any spam filters on one of my E-mails so I get loads of them. I pick out the names that are interesting or I am not sure I have, and about every other day, I sort them in the file, then scroll down to look for repeats. I do get some fun monster names because some of the names are just letters put together.

This weekend, I picked up a whole bunch of paint. I ended up spending some of my woodworking time sorting through it and getting together several sets of colors for immediate use.
Each year I make wooden Christmas ornaments, These are carved ornaments. Many times I will use the lathe to make blanks, but I carve on the final surface with the knife. I am working on doves, candy canes, wreaths, and boots as this year's set. I tried to have a dozen of each when I am done. I can make more, but the dozen is a good start. I have only four wreaths made at this point, but will have more than a dozen when I am done. I have five of ten candy canes nearly done at this moment. I have about a dozen santa boots, and half a dozen doves. The doves is the piece that has the most carving involved in them.
I am nearing the point of getting my turkey bowl done. I have the head carved and painted but have to add the eyes, and attach it to the bowl. I never got very far on the tail. I will have it, but that might happen AFTER Thanks Giving. There are some technical problems I am trying to solve. I am trying to avoid a lot of work and it does not look like I will accomplish the project without a lot of work.
I picked up a whole bunch of wood, thinking it was a local wood called SEA GRAPE. Sea grape is a brownish red colored wood that is really hard and the bugs don't like it. I grabbed some wood with reddish exposed wood. when I started turning it, I found it was a wood called Strangler Fig. This is a soft wood that the bugs absolutely love and does not keep well in my wood pile. I had far too much than I could use in a month, the wood's usable life-span in my wood pile. so I had to get rid of it. Luckily, the neighbor was getting rid of a bunch of boards so I dumped them there. On the way home, I drove past the original wood pile, the sea grape was on the bottom of the stack, and found the stack was gone. Darn. The wood I was after would have been really nice to have.

For a use of what was above, one might do a Christmas story where Santa, or a wood worker who stands if for Santa in the area, is running late on his toy making. everything is getting in the way. He receives supplies and it got all messed up during shipping so he has to sort and stack the supplies. He goes out to get some special wood for some special presents and a misunderstanding with the ones who locate the wood has him receiving the wrong wood, stuff that is not useable for any of his projects. He ends up having to dump it off to some people who could use some fire wood.
In spite of this, he somehow gets his projects going good, a chance to have everything done before the time they are needed to be packed.

AS to the question at hand,
Yes, I did write, just barely.


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annepin
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I did, I did write! I'm up to 26,000 words on Nano. I decided to let my WIP RIP, (well, for a time, anyway), and I've been tinkering away at another novel that's more complicated than my Nano novel.

And, wonder of wonders, I've come up with some story ideas lately. I thought I'd all dried up and given up on writing short stories, but, well, what do you know. Hopefully I'll have something posted in FFSS in the near future.


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KayTi
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Yes, I'm at 19k words for my nano project, which is great. I found I was able to put down 1600 words during the kids' 45 minute gymnastics class today, which really surprised me. I thought I spent too much time watching the older kids doing all these amazing stunts (including one adult male who was doing spinning flips on the trampoline - really cool to watch!) It is ironic that the section of my nano project i was working on was where I describe a game the kids play in the space station in zero gravity.

Not much else done, but given that I spent 2 of the last 7 days pretty sick with a stomach bug, I'm happy with my progress.


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Vanderbleek
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Unfortunately no...school is intense, and I'm only typing this to put off my Chemistry and Calculus...(If any of you ever run into the situation where taking two AP science classes is an option, don't.)

I did engage in a good discussion on "Heart of Darkness" by Conrad though...so I did do something related to literature.


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MrsBrown
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Barely! I started editing by novel WIP based on a thorough crit someone did for me about a month ago. But its a start! My short story can rest on the sidelines; it was a pleasant diversion while I let the novel crit percolate. Back in the saddle... or at least on the saddle blanket.
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JFLewis
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I mainly edited... polishing up a short story when I should have been revising one of my current novel projects.

Then again, I have a few hours of writing time left til I call it quits for the evening.


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tigertinite
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Yes, I edited Taco stories (Mine and others, I promise that I will finish eventually)while avoiding two research papers, a critical analysis, two journal entries, and some Chemistry homework that all happen to be due on Thursday. I am so glad that I am not an English major. . .
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Robert Nowall
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A little. About four hundred words of "Outline and Chronology" on my latest novel---I have neither 'cause I "made it up as I went along." Now I want to see how it lays out. (I've already made one decision---I'll revise Chapter Two, and that will be the new opening chapter.)
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InarticulateBabbler
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Yes, I did. I did the Flash Challenge at LH. What it amounted to was a pile of crap, but I realized that there was a nugget of gold in the pile, and spent the rest of last night cleaning it off, to see what I had.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. It's the first time I ripped everything away from a protagonist from the outset.

[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited November 13, 2007).]


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Tricia V
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I haven't even been checking in. I started Nanowrimo but then I quit after one day because I was so scattered.

What does it mean to be a writer? I know it means to write. It's just so solitary. What am I creating?

This are good questions for me to be asking, as opposed to the last two months when I've felt afraid inside and pretended to be brave. Well, I don't quite feel brave inside. I just feel like I can tell the truth, and I'm not annoyed with people who are afraid (the way we imagine a recovering alcoholic might feel during the toasts at a wedding - though it really depends.)

Okay, well. I do have a friend who said she wanted to read my book, and I'm seriously wanting to dust it off and have another go.


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Leigh
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To answer your question, yes I wrote. I continued to work on my NaNo project which is a new way of doing my WIP and it seems to be succeeding at the moment.

I've been busy the last couple of days so my aim of roughly 2500-3000 words a day has fallen behind but if I put in today, I will reach my goal of 42,500 words by the end of it. That's only 3000 words, less than two hours decent writing


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