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06-09-08 Did You Write? . It is that time of the week to brag about your accomplishments, cry about your failures, and otherwise tell about your life. This note is an attempt to prod me, and the rest of you, into writing each week. It does not matter what day or how many days, just to get you to write sometime this week. This note gives you a weekly goal to hit, Get something written this week, some how. It does not work for me, usually. I really have only one day to write, and if I cannot write that day, I go a week without writing. I am stuck with trying to come up with an excuse to tell here about why I did not write. I have to justify my dragging society down from the heights it nearly achieved had I not been a no good for nothing pathetic slob with no right to exist in this world. I consider writing to be any new writing, of course. I also consider writing to be any editing, even if it is someone else's work. Poetry counts too. Article writing, writing assignments, blogging, also count. I will even consider E-mails, as long as they are long and pertain to writing. World building also counts, especially if you get anything on paper. Really, if YOU think it is writing, It likely counts.
As for me, I have the honor to say that YES, I DID WRITE. I wrote a grand total of 347 words and added a page to my WAXY'S CLEAN FUN. I made good headway in the story. I deleted a paragraph before I started, and then started writing. It is now on page 8 with 4476 words. I would have written more but I have an excuse.
My mom gave me her old 486/33 computer. I had this set up right, with a batch file menu system that allowed one to type a letter or number to get different menus or programs. In my search of what I had put on the computer, I found that I have my story ideas from 1997 to the year 2000. I don't have access to those old years as they are on a computer that my nephew has been trying to fix for a year. He is a pro-crastinator. He is no amateur. I have not tested this 486/33 on line, but as a stand alone computer, it has everything you ever need to do anything you want. I also got a printer, a scanner, speakers, and all the disks for the programs on it. The only thing I did not get was a mouse, and I had a tract ball that works with it. Mom used a touch pad instead. This has the ultimate program, WordPerfect 5.1, on it. with wp51, I can look inside ANY file and see what is in it. I can see what kind of file it is and even read words in some machine files. that is one utility I have sorely missed. That may get transferred to my other computers fairly soon. Too bad VISTA that I use at work, won't allow any program that requires full screen DOS. I looked at a few files. I officially claim that I started my ideas in December of 1997, but I was posting ideas in October as part of a discussion. Those first ones were generally twice as long as the paper notes I write to remind myself of story ideas. I read a few ideas from 2000 and was surprised that they were quite good. Too bad I cannot re-post them out of principle. I only post new story ideas.
I posted seven story ideas this week. Several never got noted on paper, but went directly into my evil keyboard and onto screen. A couple were pathetic but filled the needed space, but a couple were pretty good. Not counting the story idea I am posting tonight, which never saw paper, I have 31 story ideas next to my keyboard. I can go blank for a whole month and not run out. A few I have really should not see the light of day, but they are there if needed.
I accomplished very little in woodworking. I made another baby rattle and made a wooden flower, a daffodil. I have one more baby rattle to make and I will then offer a choice to a friend at work who has twins.
Using the computer idea for a story idea, Consider where we are now using biological computers that work at speeds that scientists today would envy, but does not build up the heat like chips do. The entire mother board is biological while the only the connections to the rest of the world is hardware. People have accepted the process of adding nutrients, both solid that dissolve slowly and liquid nutrients to the computer. It can be a mess but not really a problem for the most part as the containers just plug in and drain at the proper rate. These computers are extremely energy efficient as really only the peripherals need power. T Hardware computers are almost non-existent being outmoded. They are too slow, to cumbersome, and require a whole lot of power just to turn on, let alone do anything. Few of the hardware computers even run any more, having outlived their usefulness. Someone then gets an old hardware computer. They are surprised that it runs, and get excited that it has all the stuff that their brain computers have. It has nothing of the capacity but they see that it is not really necessary except for the top-of-the line stuff. I just turned a version of this into tonight's story idea.
This is another week where I can say YES, I DID WRITE!
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Yep, just put the finishing touches on a short story. I actually have been doing some short stories--a bit of a shock for me since I tend toward the "I'm a novelist" kind of attitude. But I need for my novel ideas to percolate a bit.
I'm going to try to get a kind of a "stock" of short stories written--at least 10. At the moment I have all of three done.
I have been working on my flash fiction story today. It was one of those stories that just comes out and I can't find anything to change. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's nice. For me, the problem with a story like that is that there is a 50/50 chance that a year from now I'll think it's junk.
I struggled with my entry for the 13 lines challenge. I've never written really mechanical, deep in space science fiction before, and it was harder than I thought it would be. It was fun though.
My mom died two weeks ago, and I have been writing down some of my memories of taking care of her. Not really what I want to remember about her, but I had to get them onto paper before I went crazy.
That's a lot more writing than I've been doing lately, so I'll call this a successful week.
When my dad died two years ago, Mom sat down and started writing her memoirs of her time with dad and her life. She wrote a lot. Her biggest problem was remembering when things happened and what order some events happened. She was supposed to write about her travels around the country and never got very far. That became a big project. YOu will be surprised at memories that will come to the fore when you start trying to remember things. Writing memories, good and bad, about someone helps a lot. It is also great decades from now to remember what happened and when.
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I only wrote a short outline of an essay I'm writing for an upcoming project. My last major thing finished up last week, and nothing in the idea part of my brain has pushed its way forward.
That "upcoming project" involves mostly my older finished writing, but I haven't gotten around to much with that, either. I'd hoped to have it thrown together before the end of this month, but I just haven't taken the time to get it going. (I'm keeping the details hush-hush for now, but plan to talk about it when I get it up-and-running. But it's just me, and me alone, and my writing.)
It's frustrating to have the essay pretty much written in my head...while dreading the mistakes I'll make in typing it up. I'll push through on it, though, maybe later today, but definitely sometime soon.
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Yes I did. Woke up, the power was down, and had a wicked bad dream the night before, and decided to write it. Laptop had a full charge so wrote the 1300 a words. Still deciding if I should cut it down for flash or build it up for a short story. I originally spent the next hour, when the power returned, and tried for the short story. Not sure I like it. So, now I'll cut the 1300 down and see if it looks better. And I edited. I am getting tired of editing. Have 2 more weeks of editing my novel, thats if all goes well and the plot holds and doesnt need any major rehauls. And if I manage to fight down the urge to start something new. Hopefully that flash/short took care of that urge for now. But yes I did write. Posts: 1168 | Registered: Mar 2008
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All this time, I felt as if I accomplished a great deal of writing this past week. Except, after checking my progress chart, I see that the vast majority of my time was spent working on technical issues (web sites for myself and customers). One of them is a writing site, so I'm still counting it as writing progress.
I'm already well over my projected word count for my young adult novel, so, naturally, I came up with an idea for yet another scene. I seriously need to stop doing that.
I'm getting back the last of the feedback for my WotF entry. Once I've heard every last comment, I will spend the next week fine tuning the story. There's a possibility I won't make the deadline, but I'll worry about that later.
Until then, I pulled out a story (from the same series, but with different main characters) that I was convinced I would never get back to again. This story has (in my opinion) one of the best character interaction sequences I've ever written, so there's no way I can simply let this story sit and rot.
quote:When my dad died two years ago, Mom sat down and started writing her memoirs of her time with dad and her life. She wrote a lot. Her biggest problem was remembering when things happened and what order some events happened. She was supposed to write about her travels around the country and never got very far. That became a big project. YOu will be surprised at memories that will come to the fore when you start trying to remember things. Writing memories, good and bad, about someone helps a lot. It is also great decades from now to remember what happened and when.
When my mom got leukemia last year, she was only 59 years old, and the shock of it all pretty much forced me to start living my life long dream of writing. I feel like my being an author is part of her legacy, and I would love to write something that would capture the beauty of her soul.
I think it would have to be completely non chronological though, because isn't that how memories work? The train just keeps jumping the tracks and heading in strange directions. I've lived thousands of miles from my mom for eight years now, so the only really fresh memories I have of her are of her being horribly sick. She was such an incredible person though.
I guess the point is to keep writing. My fear is that that any kind of non chronological story will end up feeling like The Sound and the Fury, which is definately not what I'm going for.
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I wrote a 5000 word flash fiction piece. And a 600 word novel... (ah sarcasm) I seem to have put my novel aside to write shorter fiction for a while. It's a good thing. I was able to see a major flaw in my plot that was hiding in the background waiting to scare off a potential agent or editor. I really couldn't see it before, but a week away and it slapped me in the face. But seriously, the 5k short story is almost ready to post and my ansible flash is looking doable; I have never written a story under 3k before so it is good practice. I have always seen myself as a novelist, so it is good to know that I can complete a shorter piece.
My condolences to Unwritten; your mother was very young.
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