It is that time of the week again. That dreaded time to report whether you met the goal of writing something, anything, during the past week, or that you were so weak as to let reality get in the way and let life take over. Now you don't have to report on Monday, but it is best that you reply here the same day every week so you can actually report a week's worth of work. It could well be as late as Sunday, as long as you post. The hope is that you post, whether you write or not, just to let people know you are still well, and to get yourself to work to get something done next week.
How much you write does not matter. One word, a hundred words ten thousand words, it does not matter. If you are editing, your word count could well be going down. The act of even opening something is a lot, even if nothing is done, though the hope is that you actually do something. A little bit of a little bit, every week, does add up. What you write does not matter either. We all agree that new writing is writing. Poetry is also writing. Editing, even if it is the work of someone else is writing. Critiquing a work is a form of editing and therefore writing. Blogging, technical writing, class assignment, article writing, world and character creation, and even E-mails if they are wordy and pertain to story or writing, are all writing. If you have to ask if it is writing, the answer is yes.
I try hard not to come back and re-post on these notes, those who have reported successes here and elsewhere, I wish to say congratulations.
ON the writing front, I added two pages and over a twelve hundred words in developing the first scene of my Waxy dragon story. I fired that scene off to my writing partner and there was something in it that bothered her. I have to make a change in what I have. It is not big, but will take some imagination. I do have plenty of that. I am satisfied with the basic plot of the story I have developed. It just needs a lot of work.
On the story idea front, I have 45 story ideas in the compost pile. I have been posting new ideas all week. I have a few more new ideas on top the stack. I am a bit ahead as I have a few days I won't be able to post later this month.
I still have a strong doubt that I have done the exact same story idea. there have been a few where I would take the same concept and presentation and take it in a different direction, but those few are the only ones I know are actually close. Isaac Asimov once told about someone who had an idea and wanted Isaac to write it and split the precedes. Isaac said that he had more ideas than he could write and why doesn't the guy write a few of those and they could split to precedes of those. It has been in the recent years that I fully understood Isaac's problem. I have been posting an idea a day, since December 1997. that is a lot of ideas. I wish I had Isaac's talent where he would write it, then edit it, and then it would be publishable. None of my story ideas, even the best ones, were publishable even after ten edits. I never know when ideas will come or where they will come from. They just appear. Several years ago, I noticed I had gone some time without an idea involving a car. I was afraid I would never come up with a story idea involving cars. It took a while, but I came up with a new one, and then I have had hundreds since then. They keep coming. While my story ideas covered a varied subject matter, I do have a style. I would love to have horror, space opera, romance, rousing adventures, have a wider variety of ideas and presentations of the ideas, but it does not happen. I have fallen into a range of subject matters and presentations for those subjects. I have, by definition, developed a style and am stuck with it. I don't know how to get out of it.
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Yes! About 3,000 words on a story I finished last night. It's always so satisfying to reach "the end." Now, onward with my WotF entry.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2008
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Grats, Jen! It's always a great feeling finishing up a story. I finished the epilogue of my most recent work this morning .
Just for the fun of it I challenged myself to finish a book in ten days, writing twenty pages a day. It actually ended up being only 150 pages rather than the 200 I was shooting for, but the climax came earlier than I expected and winding up took fewer pages than anticipated. I'm pretty happy with it though, because for once I just worked through from start to finish instead of bloating the story with constant additions.
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Congrats on your accomplishment, Nate. If I wrote 85,000 words in a year, that would be a feat. Did you stop to eat or sleep?
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I only added a page or two to my current story, Been busy with life in general and school. So yes, I did write, but not as much as I hoped.=(
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Only a few actual words on the WIP novel, but some work on the outline and structure, so I'm counting that as a yes.
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Not as much as I'd have liked to but I got some done. Work's busy at the moment and it's that time of year when the veg patch demands a bit of attention. Still, I've mostly being getting my 500 a day.
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Close to 4K new words, and a few minor editing efforts.
I also spent a good deal of time and energy working on my administration website, in particular the part that keeps track of my writing exploits. Even in its incomplete form, it's given me curious insight as to how I'm currently spending my writing energy and how much actual progress said energy is actually yielding.
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Some, yes. Only about 1.2k though. I think I need to pause and rethink both the section I am just finishing and the next one. Something feels off, and I find when I end up doing just about everything but writing, that means something's off the rails with the story. We'll see where this takes me.
Posts: 293 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I'll see your 500 words and raise you 500 words...
Ah, it's always interesting to see what has been accomplished - I used to count the words and write it down and when it dipped below 500 on a particular day I would try to make it up another day. It's not the quantity; it's not the quality; it's not the quackery. You just need time.
I started another story getting about five paragraphs before voice recording some ideas about the protagonist and antagonist and possible endings. I read part of another story into the voice recorder and played it back multiple times, changing dialog so it would flow better. Got a burst of inspiration about a story to shift scenes around: did the cut/paste and rewrite of scene entrance and exit points.
Then you see where your time could've been spent writing but did something else. Decided the new book received from Ebay auction was more important to skim through than work one evening. Decided to do some internet research for historical accuracy than continue another WIP story and came back with an almost empty notes file.
Added 2500 words to my flash that hadn't sold. Made it sci-fi which opens it up to new markets. The good news is I like it just as much now that its a short story.
More on my story, I finished the revision of the first section and again am headed down the tracks. Still not sure who killed the person and one or two other things but I'm still writing.
Worked on my novels, Maybe none on New Mage, but have started the conclusion of "Storm Born". And interesting enough I also started the conclusion of the revision of Bright Lights.
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Still on a writing drought. I mustered another chapter and I am still liking my novel, but I am getting into that mode where I feel like I am a terrible writer. The story itself is there, but the words and style I feel have so much to be desired.
Strangely this recent thought has coincided with my recent return to reading stronger writing (recently Cormac McCarthy and John Steinbeck) instead of a more typical paperback novel.
Part of me wants to keep on plowing through it, but then the other part is thinking I am just adding more drivel that will make it more difficult to revise later...
And on top of all of that, I just deleted my blog. I am leaning toward using a pen name in the future as to not interfere with my professional life. I don't mind that people know who I am (it's quite obvious from my email address), but with work I don't want to have a running blog with content that may be misunderstood based on false perceptions of writerly types and genre fiction.
When we are asked, "did you write," we often reply with a little or a lot -- but rarely do I see someone writing in negative quantities. It seems this past week I may have been writing myself backwards and am concerned that it may be the direction I am heading...
But I will finish my novel and hopefully many more to come!
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