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Did You Write? November First, two thousand and Nine.
Greetings and salutations on this ominous day. It is the time to announce to the world on one's productivity or lack of it. This note is to prompt you to write. You know the note is coming at the same time of the week. You want to say you accomplished something and would rather not confess a failed week, so you will sit down for a few minutes and write, to produce something, to brag that you are a writer. What is writing, will always be a debate. How many words one must produce in order to say you wrote, will also be up for debate. I will admit, as many of you have seen, that producing a paragraph of new text counts for me as writing. Editing, even if it is someone else's work, is also writing, along with poetry, Blogging, technical writing, world and character building as long as something gets on paper. Even E-mails can be writing if it is wordy and pertains to writing or story. It is really up to you.
I can say I did write. I added four pages and 2,707 words to my waxy birth story, all new scenes and most everything here after is also new. This is exciting writing. A lot of it is being worked out as I write it. One thing I really should do, but don't know if I will, is to create a map of the land. It would help.
I finished last month's story ideas with the requisite 31 story ideas for the month. I wrote 45 pages of drivel, equaling 26,798 words. The beauty of all that is that it is never the same piece of work. It is hard to get tired of it. I finished the month doing those story concepts where I converted my activities into story ideas. There are several more good ones to do, and a bunch that can be posted but likely won't as they are so close to others I did do. I won't do a compost pile count, but I do know that my source of my new ideas have been fairly dry.
I have finally started on my carved Christmas ornaments for the year. I have had some of the blanks already made, just waiting to be carved, for a while, but just had other projects to do first. They have to be finished by the end of November so I am forcing myself to get my act together.
Taking the above concepts and turning them into story ideas, I had used old notes and turned them into story ideas. This new concept is that He works for an old company. He spends most of his time in records. The bosses say the company is in trouble, and they need some new ideas to save it. Well, since he is in records, he looks at the records of the meetings over the century of the company's life. At the meeting, others are telling all the same old ideas that have been tried and failed. he finally speaks up and describes an idea he read about, but he does not tell where he got it. He explains what might work. Everybody either thinks it is too far out, or a brilliant idea. The idea gets implemented, with changes. There is already signs it is working. One thing he starts doing is comparing explanations used at different times, and also does historical research on other companies to see if they used it. The ideas he presents after that, are less shocking or wild, and better explained and developed. he even brings up where such ideas worked and actually points out where it failed. They start thinking him of as a genius.
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Yes. I've been doing revisions on BLOOD WILL TELL (I really have to think of a better title for it.) I also wrote a whole new short story. My second. Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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Lots of edits on various stories, a couple of blog posts and (at this moment) 13K on my nano project.
Posts: 715 | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote: I think 'Blood Will Tell' is a good title. Does it not fit the story well or have you been living with it too long?
I don't think it fits the story particularly well. It makes it sound bloody, which it's not. It kind of fits the characters in that some of their behavior is determined by their natures (blood, sort of). But I know there's a better title out there. I just haven't found it, yet.
By contrast, THE SHAMAN'S CURSE and DREAMER'S ROSE are perfect titles for those novels. And THE IGNORED PROPHECY is at least a good title for that book, if not perfect.
BLOOD WILL TELL just feels sort of peripheral. It doesn't get to the heart of the story for me. Altough, it is catchy.
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Got a little done over the week on my 4th and I-hope-to-Elbesem-last stab at "Twilight Meetings." Also did some crits and a good deal of email/msgboard discussion of writing topics.
Posts: 2626 | Registered: Apr 2008
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I always thought the "blood" in your title referred to heredity. In kind of a "bad blood will always run true" sort of way. Limpieza de sangre and all that jazz.
Posts: 715 | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:I always thought the "blood" in your title referred to heredity. In kind of a "bad blood will always run true" sort of way. Limpieza de sangre and all that jazz.
Well, that's pretty close to the meaning I intended. Maybe it isn't such a bad title after all. I don't know. It sure beats anything else I've been able to come up with so far.
[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited November 02, 2009).]
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Well, after letting things go for a couple of weeks, I got back in the saddle and wrote something new.
First, I sifted around in my files of old ideas for anything that "grabbed" me. Quite by chance I turned up a diskette, dating partially to the days of my one-lung word processors, ideas from somewhere in the 1990s. (There were some early computer stuff on one of them: I didn't get a computer until 1998.)
Second, or more likely simultaneously with this, I came to a realization that I liked to have a central character who's been "taken for a sea change," kind of involved in processes that changed them utterly, but who somehow retain their humanity.
I found an old idea in that file that suggested that...I found it Thursday, wrote down some notes on it Friday, started it up on Saturday with an opening thousand words in combined outline and story beginning, continued with another thousand words on Sunday and yet another thousand words on Monday. Probably I'll slump down to five hundred words a day if I remain inspired, but we'll see.
I have a pretty good idea what'll happen at the end...I have some stuff to fill in in the middle, but that's usual, there's always something to fill in. I think it might be another of my twenty-thousand-worders, but that'll be something I'll have to live with.
I'm happy to be back at the writing trade, at least for awhile.
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Should'a mention I've got some research to do...among other things, I've got to find out how (or if) a million-gallon water pump works, and what it looks like, and how busted it would have to be to work or not work. I haven't done it yet, but online research rarely lets me down in this kind of thing.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Started another short story. Trying to get my heart into the pathos a bit more though. Sounds like something to meditate on on the bus tomorrow... I've decided to try and edit this and my last one into a form I can attempt to submit, so I'm raising the bar, finally. It's going to be an interesting ride.
Posts: 921 | Registered: Nov 2008
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If we are voting, I say Blood Will Tell is a good title, especially if it refers to the nature of an individual. You can get into all the thematic elements of nature vs. freedom, and I love a good thematical story.
Also, Yes, I wroted. I did a 1300 word flash story (the first 13 are posted in the feedback for short stories. You should all go read it and tell me how to fix it... cause I think it needs fixing!)
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