It is that time for that pesky question again. It is time to admit whether you succeeded in a simple goal, or that life got in the way of something that is important. now is time to answer the question, DID YOU WRITE? My hope is that this note regularly appearing each week will prompt you to sit down and write something, anything, however amount, so that you can proudly announced that you accomplished something this week. This is a place where you can brag about your accomplishments, cry about your failures, and otherwise to tell what is happening in your life. As to what is writing, That up to opinion. Most weeks I give examples of what can be writing. I am lazy today so I will skip the list of what I suggest as possible writing. Check previous weeks for possible lists. .
As for me, I can proudly say I am writing and have written. I am working diligently on my Waxy birth story. I have been adding pages, all week long with new content or expanded content. I zapped about six paragraphs of stuff a few days ago and still gained pages in the story. I have a page or so of stuff that will disappear, but I am not up to that point. What I am excited about is that I am digging into fresh scenes. I found I had a scene where Waxy was with a bunch of campers. They all go to bed. For some reason, she would not simply sleep. That is the nature of Waxy in the other stories. It is usually at night that she sneaks through the portal for her adventures. Once she was out of the tent, I had to have her get into trouble with one of the native animals. That animal was going to be something small, and argument, but then I have a wolf like creature in the story here and there, so Waxy told me it has to be one of them or she will go on strike. I was then going to have her go for help, but Waxy then told me that was not her way. She wants to be the hero of the story. The simple scene where she just goes to sleep for the night, did not fit her personality so now she is going to save a little girl from a monster. It is fun when one has a character that really exists in your mind. They tell you what they won't do. Anyway I had done my number count when this scene demanded to be written, so I returned to it and now she has met the creature that will start the confrontation. A good place to pause. Even with the section I removed, I have added 6 pages and 3244 words. I am working at page 51 of page 56. It is also nearly 37,000 words. My working about an hour a day on this really makes it nice. I am not wore out from writing so the excitement is still there, but it is also long enough to get something done on it. It leaves the rest of the evening to get other things done.
I am keeping up on the story ideas. Tonight will be idea number twelve. I have 42 concepts in my compost pile, including what I am posting tonight. It is a wonder how I keep coming up with story ideas, able to keep up with my posts. New concepts are fun. I note them on a paper so I won't forget them. Hopefully, I will write enough to prompt my mind to remember what was exciting about the concept. Not all are good, some just fill a space, but once in a while, one really sparks the imagination and is exciting to get onto paper. One advantage of my writing story ideas, is that once written out, I can forget it. It is not going to bug me to write it. It seldom takes two hours to write one, and that can be used as a pattern for a longer piece if it is interesting enough to develop farther. My problem, of course, is that I cannot write 365 finished stories in a year. I can barely write six good pieces. Since I cannot use all the concepts I get, I post them on line in case some other author has use for them. I take my basic concept, such as planting aggressively growing vines, onto a tree that grows extra tall. and turn it into a couple page story (Idea 10 of this month) showing how the basic concept MIGHT be used. The author might take a bit or piece of the presentation such as the original concept, or some other aspect of the presentation, or the whole story concept, and turn it into something they have fun writing. I work from the belief that if twenty people wrote from the same story idea, they would end up with twenty totally different stories. I know from what I have done with my own story ideas, nothing ended up being the same thing as the original concept. The birth of Waxy rewrite looks little like the original concept, though you can see some aspects of that. It changed so much in the rewriting. It will be the same thing when someone tries to turn a story idea into something finished.
Yard sales are big at this time of year here in Florida. We spent the entire Saturday yard sailing, looking for bargains. Sunday, I decided I had to do some woodworking. I found the urge was to carve. When I settled in on a project, I decided on a vase I had made with the intention to carve. It is in Norfolk Island Pine where the knots run around the truck in a ring, then there is a space before the next ring of branches. I had two of these vases. One I decided should be flowers and vines since the knots were near the top of the vase. I painted the vines, leaves and flowers to give me a view of what it should look like. Since that paint was drying, I looked at the second vase. The knots were lower in the piece. It SAID faces, with the knots being eyes. I sat down and started carving. I now have three faces around the vase. One bare chinned, one in beard, one with bushy mustache. I am not good with faces but these came out fairly good. I took pictures and they do look a bit strange. I have a turning club meeting this week and rushed home with the thought to give it a finish so I could display it at the club. I decided that they need a lot more carving to be presentable. Darn.
To make the above into a story idea, The mug was made from haunted wood. The carver was not as good as he thought he was and he never knew the nature of the wood. When he finished for the day, he had three different faces around the mug. Each one was uglier than the other. They were the best faces he could carve. That night, the magic in the wood dust and wood chips on his skin, in his clothing and hair, had their effect on him. He was found dead late in the day, a look of horror on his face, holding himself tightly into a ball as if trying to escape something. His work, finished and unfinished, was sold. Not knowing what caused his death, they burned his house down, making sure all wood products not worked with burned with him. Years later, on the anniversary of his death, the faces on the mug comes alive at a tavern. One tells the person of their death. Another speaks loudly and tells something of their past that they don't want known. The third tells how they are going to fail at whatever they do.
As to the question of the week, I can honestly say
posted
I did and I am. I have written about 7000 net new words on Dreamer's Rose. It feels really good to have this moving again. New ideas are flowing. New scenes are appearing out of the ether, asking to be written. After struggling with this one for months, it's finally flowing. Woo Hoo!
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posted
If anybody follows my entries in previous "did you write?" threads---I suppose anything is possible---you might remember I said I was going away and wouldn't be writing during that time.
I'm back. I didn't do any writing. My literary efforts consisted of writing up notes and diary entries on where I went and what I did (a dull record), and dreaming a powerful end scene to a novel whose beginning I don't know and didn't have time to figure out.
Now that I'm back I hope to finish up the final draft of the horrid thing I was working on---I've got time, I've got more than a week off from work before I have to go back---get that sent out, maybe, and maybe then, write something else. I'd like to write something a lot shorter than the last three things I've finished (twenty thousand words, twenty thousand words, and ten thousand words respectively). I may never write down that end scene I mentioned above.
posted
I polished my bacon horror story, sent it off Thursday and it got accepted Sunday night. woohoo
I have to admit, I didn't do much other writing except a little background work on my NaNo characters. I usually need a few days off after finishing something.
This week I'll be getting back to things. I have two short stories I would like to polish so I can send them out before NaNo. If I get one done this week I'll be happy.
posted
Robert, you don't have to write the whole rest of the novel to write the end scene. Just as movies don't have to be filmed in the order in which the scenes appear on the screen, a book doesn't have to be written in the order in which it will be read.
Go ahead and write the end scene. What can it hurt? You may realize, as you write it, what needs to come immediately before it, and you can write that. And then what comes before that, and so on, until you've written the whole thing backwards, more or less.
It's only a first draft. But start with the scene that you have clear in your mind right now. Worry about anything else that may go with it later--when it's also clear and ready to be written.
posted
I've come to dislike having too much in the way of disjointed and unconnected scenes...I spent the early part of this year working on the beginning of a would-be novel without any idea of what was happening in it or where it would go. And it's not the first time that's happened, either.
When the result is short, say, five thousand words or less, it's not much of a problem...but some of my going-nowhere works have run up to a hundred thousand words. That was a lot of time to spend on something that "isn't happening for me," and that I can't manage to finish, and I'd rather not spend the time.
So, generally, I won't put fingers to keys unless I can write down something with, at least, a rough outline of where it's going or where it's coming from. Things might change along the way of writing---they usually do---but I'd like to have something firmed up before I set it down.
Till then, I think I'll keep them in my head, and work on them there...
posted
Robert, have you tried this technique? A fellow Hatracker posted it recently, and to my eyes it seems specifically intended for someone who knows the ending of a story but NOT the beginning:
Oh, and yes, I did write. I finished up chapter 6 on my novel and had a great brainstorming session on how to make act II of the three act book. Plotting has always been my greatest challenge (perhaps because I have rarely gone past that part...) so I am 2/3 done with the hard bit, and about 1/5 done with the writing bit!
[This message has been edited by Teraen (edited October 14, 2009).]
posted
Actually, my disdain for working on it outside my head comes from being completely hung up on the what / when / who...I have the end, but not a thing else. I have to play around with it inside my head...just to get something to write down.
I do a lot of back-and-forth thinking...but I usually write from the beginning to the end...
posted
Oh, yeah. I am making a complete mess, hopefully productive later, out of this book. I have amassed something very close to 100K words but I think I need to junk 20K or so and add another 50K. It's hard for me to figure out how much detail and what kind to put in. I am working on characterization a lot as I think that's problematic for me.
It was interesting to read what you guys were saying about writing the end first (This may be helpful to me.) and about organization of scenes. I am having big problems with that right now. I know pretty much what I want to happen but getting it all tied up right is something else again.
posted
Don't you just hate it when your muse speaks to you and your story is falling into place in your head but there just aren't enough hours in the day to get it all down on paper?
Yeah...I finally gave up on some sleep in favor listening to my muse. So YES I did write this week!
[This message has been edited by RillSoji (edited October 14, 2009).]
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