Hatrack River Writers Workshop   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Writers Workshop » Forums » Open Discussions About Writing » 12-27-10 Did You Write?

   
Author Topic: 12-27-10 Did You Write?
rstegman
Member
Member # 3233

 - posted      Profile for rstegman   Email rstegman         Edit/Delete Post 
12-27-10 Did You Write?

It is that time of the week again, the time to report how you did this week. Many among us struggle to write three times a year, let alone once a week or every day. Life loves to get into the way of writing. There are times when life cannot be held off long enough to open a project.
This note is to allow you to brag about your accomplishments, cry about your failures, and otherwise tell about what is going on in your life.
By reporting what happened, even if you failed to write, this note provides a prompt, an incentive to open something up even if there is to write a couple words or change a sentence. The idea is to try to develop a habit to write regularly, which could eventually result in writing "The End" on a project. The writing each week might bring forth a project that you will want to work every day on. At least that is the hope. The main thing is to get people to write, and posting on this note, whether you write or not, is my method of getting that to happen.



I did write, I was reducing the size of my story in progress. I did not work as much as I hoped to because much of the past week was getting ready for the Christmas Holidays. If I had worked my normal time on the story, I doubt I would have reduced it by too much. This is hard work as every sentence feels like it is needed. removing them takes a number of passes over a passage.
This week, I removed only 204 words. for this whole editing pass, I have only removed 2000 words and still have over ten thousand words to remove. I will eventually have to remove some major scenes.

I am keeping up on the story idea front. I have 53 story ideas in my compost pile. all the ideas I posted this week came out of my head the past two weeks. The top ten are interesting. I am not sure about anything below that. I have had a good couple weeks of ideas appearing. Makes up for weeks where nothing comes, though I would rather not have nothing weeks...

This year, the Christmas presents were either purchased from yard sales over the past several months or they were items I made by my own craftiness. Everybody seemed quite satisfied with the results.
I painted two sets of Christmas cards and they were well appreciated. It was some hard work but I liked the results better than any purchased cards. For one thing, there is a limited number of them that cannot be picked up anywhere else. Also, picking something off the shelf has a different dynamics than taking the time to actually make them.
The same went for presents I made out of wood or yarn. Rather than grabbing something off a shelf, I spent a lot of time thinking about it long before it was given.
Because of this effort, I had more fun giving than in any year I ever had. I did not even care if I got anything. That was a wonderful feeling. I did get some gift cards, though.

For a story idea. one might have a society where one just pushes a button to give someone a gift. One can give to one person or thousands, and one can give the same thing or a thousand different things with no more effort.
One person chooses to do something different this time. she actually goes to the supply houses, searches for and picks up the items she wants to gift, and delivers them personally to the people who are getting them. By doing it personally, there is conversation, eye contact, and sometimes physical contact, which people normally do not experience on a normal basis. She also gets to meet all those different people which is a joy since everybody spends most of their lives in cubicals or rooms.
Because she is gone all the time, she does not get many of the things sent to her cubical. She is satisfied that she actually meets people personally, which is a better present than anything they could hit a button and give her.

As to the question of the day, I can honestly say

YES I WROTE!!!
Though not as much as I wanted to.

DID YOU WRITE?

Posts: 1008 | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
JenniferHicks
Member
Member # 8201

 - posted      Profile for JenniferHicks   Email JenniferHicks         Edit/Delete Post 
Yes. I wrote pages and pages of character profiles and world-building stuff for my next story. Now I actually have to write the story, which will give me something to do instead of agonizing over the latest round of pending WotF results.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Meredith
Member
Member # 8368

 - posted      Profile for Meredith   Email Meredith         Edit/Delete Post 
Yes, I did.

Still in the rewrite of the first part of DREAMER'S ROSE. Some critiques. And two blog posts.


Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Tiergan
Member
Member # 7852

 - posted      Profile for Tiergan   Email Tiergan         Edit/Delete Post 
Yep.
Posts: 1168 | Registered: Mar 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Wordcaster
Member
Member # 9183

 - posted      Profile for Wordcaster   Email Wordcaster         Edit/Delete Post 
Got a few thousand words in on the first draft of my novel. Close to half done now.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Jul 2010  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Crank
Member
Member # 7354

 - posted      Profile for Crank   Email Crank         Edit/Delete Post 
Looking at my progress chart from last week, I see I was all over the map. I did manage to type a few new words, so I'm deeming it a good week.

S!
S!
Website: 46th Cyber Squadron


Posts: 620 | Registered: Dec 2007  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
genevive42
Member
Member # 8714

 - posted      Profile for genevive42   Email genevive42         Edit/Delete Post 
Yep. I'm about halfway through my next WotF entry and I did some crits.
Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
walexander
Member
Member # 9151

 - posted      Profile for walexander   Email walexander         Edit/Delete Post 
I surprised myself this week with 7000 wc and still going on a new novel. That's still with looking up things and writing down added ideas. I feel a little strange because most of my first ideas had come from concepts I thought about over my life, but this is a whole new idea. Backed with some of the stronger concepts that never went anywhere. I had to admit I wasn't sure I could out imagine my youth.

Also I'm finishing up research on my new wotf story. Learning more tech jargon about robotics than I think I ever really wanted to know, but it's hard to explain something if you don't know what the heck your talking about.

And one letter to Santa that I think I'm good in comparison to most and I believe he should adjust the standards of present giving by an overall sliding scale for next year, and if he's going to give me coal could he at least make it matchstick easy light, because those old hard lumps of coal are darn hard to get started.

W.

[This message has been edited by walexander (edited December 28, 2010).]


Posts: 634 | Registered: Jun 2010  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
pdblake
Member
Member # 9218

 - posted      Profile for pdblake   Email pdblake         Edit/Delete Post 
Not a word this week. Too busy with Christmas and birthdays.

I'll hopefully get a bit done later this week.


Posts: 778 | Registered: Aug 2010  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Robert Nowall
Member
Member # 2764

 - posted      Profile for Robert Nowall   Email Robert Nowall         Edit/Delete Post 
Another washout week. I was up for twenty-five-and-a-half hours from eight PM Thursday to nine-thirty PM Friday, Christmas Eve---I had a busy day at work followed by the responsibility of making the traditional Christmas Eve spaghetti. Christmas Day I managed to be really really sick and then went to relatives for Christmas Day dinner. Busy, busy, busy...

I'm hopeful for this week...


Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Smaug
Member
Member # 2807

 - posted      Profile for Smaug   Email Smaug         Edit/Delete Post 
I actually wrote several blog entries. I don't know if I count those though. However, I wrote a huge 127 words of my novel as well--editing, slow going. Yesterday was only the second day I've been able to write this month.

[This message has been edited by Smaug (edited December 28, 2010).]


Posts: 440 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Owasm
Member
Member # 8501

 - posted      Profile for Owasm   Email Owasm         Edit/Delete Post 
Not much.
Posts: 1608 | Registered: Feb 2009  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
LDWriter2
Member
Member # 9148

 - posted      Profile for LDWriter2   Email LDWriter2         Edit/Delete Post 
Yes I wrote.

On Monday boy did I write.

I had it off and after breakfast I took my daughter to her grandparents, came home and started working on the new ending for "Bright Lights and Chaos". With an hour to an hour and half off for lunch I wrote to when I had to leave to pick her up. My wife came up around 4:20 and slowed me down for about fifteen minutes. At the very least it was 5,000 words but probably 8,000 plus. I finished that new ending just in time.

All together I added 12,000 words to my novel so its now a couple hundred beyond 66,000. Some of it is my best writing. Well, I think so, have to see if anyone else agrees.

Of course I realized it's not the true ending. I still have half a page of true ending that needs a bit of work. Maybe turn it into a page and half to two pages.

I also posted part of a blog post...I got interrupted before I could say everything I wanted to. And I did two crits for stories-Critters- and three or five crits for queries.

I worked some on "Storm Born". Started chapter 11. It might be half way done by word count or somewhat over half way. By ideas its 80% done.

Oh yes I worked on New Mage On The Block. I started chapter four I believe and I need another danger filled scene soon. Not sure what. Maybe she accidently gets caught in a gang fight or some gangster event. And I have an unusual problem. The bad guy has already sicced a Griffin on her, which she ended up befriending, but she has just met the guy and he didn't know who she was...no she wasn't disguised She doesn't know who he is either. My thought was to say he saw into the future and knew the enemy who could stop him would be at that place where the griffin attacked her but wasn't able to get a look at her.

I think that's it


Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2