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Author Topic: January 04-2010, Did You Write?
rstegman
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January 04-2010, Did You Write?

Happy New year!!!!!
This is a time where one looks back over the past year and see how useless and mangy a mutt one was, and then look forward and figure out how to make changes, improvements in one's life. Within a month, all the determination will be gone and one will be back to old habits.
I don't make new year's resolutions, but decided this year required a change. My resolution for this year is to become the GOD-BEING OF THE UNIVERSE. I will then solve my problems, if I find any..... Actually Why mess with perfection........
I suggest one writerly resolution for this year. It should be an easy one to keep up.
Remember that this note will be coming up every week. Try to report some bit of writing each week. If you can keep this resolution, you will have gained a lot on last year.

As to what is writing, it really depends on what YOU call writing. Any new writing is writing, so is editing Even if it is editing or critiquing someone else's work. Poetry, article writing, Blogging, world or character creation, are all writing. So might be E-mails, as long as they are wordy and pertain to writing or story. It really depends on what you consider writing.
There is never a comment on how much one writes either. the more, the merrier, but a paragraph will pass as writing.

I had started a separate note on how I did this past year, but I thought I would include it here.
I have 12 files of stories. many of them are scenes that would be applied to a larger story, but there are a few completed pieces. In them together, I wrote 165 pages made up of 99,991 total words
I hope to do better this year. I want to finish more stories. it should be easier since I have found a way to be more regular on my writing.
This past week I added a page and 494 words to my Waxy story. I sort of held off after the first of the year so I could get some statistics for the year. It is not flowing as easily as my story ideas, but it is coming along.

On the story idea front for December, I did 31 story ideas at 59 pages. for a total of 35,877 words. Not bad, but I could be doing better. I liked the story ideas when the whole month was closer to 60,000 words. When rushed for time, I don't always apply myself to showing the concepts properly.
For the year, I still did not do to bad.
I did 368 story ideas. I cannot remember if this was a leap year or not, and am to lazy to look it up. I either ended up with three, or two, story ideas ahead for the year. This is the worst I have ever done. My previous low was five extra story ideas. Even so, and idea a day is not something to complain about.
These story ideas amounted to 538 pages of single spaced writing for 187,429 words. That is about one and a half pages per idea. Not bad. I won't complain too much. Too bad that was not applied to novels. That would be four unpublishable novels......

I spent the weekend trying to get Mom's brand new computer set up for her use. It has Windows 7, and this is my first meeting with the program. I am a person who started with DOS, then went to windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, and Vista. with a thankfully quick meeting with Millennium. Of all of them, XP is the best, followed by 2000 and 98.
I use Vista at work and have my complaints about it. Windows 7 has all the irritations of Vista, without the ease of use.
My problem with windows 7 is that I know what I am doing, and it won't let me do it. That is one thing that irritates me to no end. I have a good reason for doing something.
I also found out that the printer I thought had committed suicide, was actually faking it. I gave it a good examination and CAREFULLY plugged it in and found it working. I went for several years without a printer, and now that I had one, I find I do have a need for it. I have another printer that I cannot get the driver for. My nephew has the driver disk but I don't think he can find it.

To put the above into a story idea. You have a society where everything is computerized. Each computerized item has a personality. One usually talks to them.
He has been on board a space ship for a couple decades. The computers on board the ship was very primitive, even when they were built, designed rugged to handle the harsh environments. They had no intelligence.
He arrives and goes through training to return to society. It is nothing like it was when he left and he is way behind.
On board ship, he was the computer expert, but now he is a computer idiot. He gets into his home and now has to get to work. he has to search to find a keyboard, then has to search to find a place to plug it in. He starts typing and the words are changing in syntax and structure as quickly as he is typing it. The computer is changing what he is doing. He tries to make some changes in the way th computer looks and works and his attempts to get to the working part of the computer is diverted by all sorts of things. He will click on a command and they had swapped positions so he gets the wrong thing.
Printers decide they don't like him because he won't coddle them, convince them that they are doing him a favor. His refrigerator decides he needs to go on a diet. His shower decides that cold showers are better than hot showers. The whole house is acting like it is going crazy.
The house and appliances misjudged on one thing. He does know computers and slowly, he gains control over everything. when it is about time for him to leave for more training, His house is under his absolute control and the personalities only show in how they talk to him, not on how they do their jobs.


For the Question of the day,
I can say for the week,

YES, I DID WRITE.
For the year, I can also say
YES, I DID WRITE.

DID YOU WRITE?






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Lionhunter
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Finished a short story before the new year and mailed it.
Writing a short story,about 1/3 in,paused for a day because of college.
Have an idea about a thriller/suspense short story where the MC just puffs a cigar one late night and hears someone's cry outside turn to scream and another idea about a future where Africans are chinese citizens and there's this biker/gangster who needs to work out a deal of some sort.
Didn't write anything new at Sleepwalkers. Loooong pause there.

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BenM
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Lots (and lots and lots) of editing this last week, and some more planned for the next two weeks: My WOTF story has me scratching my head.

I need to make the time to write something new though. I've taken to heart something I read on Dean Wesley Smith's blog: Dare To Be Bad. If I can just get used to writing regularly, bad and all, hopefully I'll learn to write well.


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genevive42
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2500 words on my newest story which I hope to be a WotF submission.
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JenniferHicks
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Yes! I wrote about 1,500 on my new laptop (first time I've ever had a computer for my exclusive use) and finished the first draft of my WotF entry for second quarter.
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arriki
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Outlining, outlining. Figuring out background and motivations.
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Meredith
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Yes, I did. I did revisions (and rewrote one chapter) on BLOOD WILL TELL, thanks to the chapter exchange. And I wrote most of a couple of chapters in SEVEN STARS (I'll have to put in some bridge material, but the main stuff is there.)
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dougsguitar
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Yes I did. I wrote a very nice resume without having to lie about any of it... You know the resume is a very close cousin to the query... mountains of rejections with a smattering of possibilities capped (one hopes) with a single gleaming success!

I also wrote a few hundred words, emphasis on few, on the WotF SS. I am experiencing the mid-way-crawl I've heard about. I know what to do NEXT, but NEXT is still a coupla pages away.


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Kitti
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Lots of revisions on one of my WIPs.
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TaoArtGuy
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989 words for my WIP novel.

My goal for 2010 is 750 words per day. I only wrote 189 words yesterday and was thinking I set the bar too high. So I am mightily chuffed to have blasted by my goal this evening.


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Merlion-Emrys
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Finished "The Open Hand." Fixed an error in a story and sent it back out. Did some critting and lots of catching up on emails.
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Robert Nowall
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My literary efforts consisted of taking the time Sunday to print out my latest work, as a preliminary part of starting revision on it. (I like to reconsider every sentence, and the best way to do that is to type it all out again.)

I'd planned for more, but one thing crowds out another, y'know?


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ScardeyDog
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I critted (is that a word?) the first four pages of a novel.
I brainstormed about a new short story.
I finished a previous short story.

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InarticulateBabbler
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Worked on 3 outlines, which I intend to progress today.
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Owasm
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Wrote a short story.

Worked on a possible WotF candidate and then I perused a WotF Anthology 23 and found nine out of the thirteen winners were written in first person and most were SF rather than Fantasy.

Did a little work on my Panix WIP novel.

Thought, but did not write, a lot about reworking my NaNo novel.

Not a lot of productivity to begin the year.

[This message has been edited by Owasm (edited January 05, 2010).]


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