It is that time of the week. What has been going on in your life? what about your writing? We just passed through The Thanksgiving Holidays here in the States. For some people, holidays mean staying home and writing. For others it means more tasks on the plate and less writing. Which is it for you? The answer will also tell you how you are likely to bo doing over the Christmas Holidays coming up. Oh, that reminds me. the end of the year is but a month away. Think about how you have done this year in your writing. Have you met or exceeded your goals or are you way behind and writing heavy the rest of the year is not going to help? The hope of posting here whether you write or not, is to use implied pier pressure, or shame, to get yourself to write regularly, to develop it into a habit and get some real work done. This is especially important to those of us who will somehow go months without writing a word.
AS to what is writing, If you have to ask, the answer is yes, it is writing. New writing, editing even if it is the work of others, critiquing, poetry, blogging, article writing, technical writing, writing assignments, synopsis and query letters, world and character development, all are writing. E-mails and board posts might also be writing if they are wordy and pertain to writing or story.
As for me, Yes I have been writing. Not as much as I wanted. For me, the Holidays and subsequent recovery cut down my writing time. Also, things have gotten busy at work and I am getting full weeks for once. The pay looks great but the hours are cramped for writing. There is a limit that things can be squeezed in. In the next few weeks, I have to squeeze in even more into the ever shrinking hours I have. I am editing my Sprit of Vengeance story. The previous editing pass was a section by section re-write, where I corrected and changed entire sections and added more. Now I am doing a heavy edits, cleaning up sentences and fixing loose or incomplete passages. If I can get some spare time, I might be able to finish this soon. 'As it is, I have added 650 words this week and a whole page. The next paragraph I add will kick it to the next page.
On the home front, I am working on my Christmas ornaments. The last two weeks, I came up with my four designs. I need twelve of each. that is 48 total pieces. I have ten of one design. I have six of a couple other designs, and I only have three of a fourth design. I have this next weekend to get them done. I am starting to plan the Christmas cards I need to paint. I would like to get them started early so I can get them done with plenty of time to think about other things. The past couple years, I was painting them on Christmas Eve, to be given out that night. I want to avoid that pressure. I usually need to paint twenty four of them in total, usually two different designs as I really can only paint twelve at a time and the second time I figure out how to do it better. when I first starting making my cards, I was going to use stamps, and then realized it would be easier to paint them. I get more pleasure and compliments over making my cards than anything I could pick out and buy. Many people keep them as art pieces. It is work but I do like the results when done. I learned something new about machining this weekend. I made another step to being closer to make a tool I need for my metal working lathe. I also tested a tool I made and had a partial failure. Luckily, I can easily fix the problem and continue to use my creation.
As to the question of the week, I can honestly say
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Oh Meredith, how much I envy you right now. But I'm getting there.
Yes, I definitely wrote. It was the last full week of NaNo and I seem to have pulled out all the stops. I was up to 80k on Dark Mirror at the end of Sunday, after a couple of 5k days. I know I have a ways to go still, with everything that still has to happen, and at times my brain is very tired at this point, but I'm still going and part of it is being bouyed by the feeling that I'm really doing this! That and a lot of support and cheering from friends and family. This won't be finished in November, but I'm hoping by Christmas, I'll be writing The End on my first complete draft of a novel. Wouldn't that be a christmas present to myself?
quote:I typed "The End" at the bottom of MAGIC'S FOOL.
As a dyslexic, it's perfectly acceptable for me to type THE END on my manuscript, then start writing the story.
I worked on my mainstream novel, one of my science fiction short stories, and two flash fiction stories. The actual new word count was anemic, but the research and editing work I did more than made up for it.
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Crank, you don't have to be dyslexic to write a story from the end to the beginning. Writing a story from beginning to end is only one way to write a story, after all. Just because a story is usually read from beginning to end, doesn't mean it has to be written that way, especially in first draft.
Consider that they don't necessarily film movies from beginning to end.
In fact, I recommend writing the parts that you are most excited about first, and then the next parts that you are most excited about, and so on. Once you've gotten all the excitement written (and you have a better chance of conveying your excitement in your writing), then you can go through and add whatever is needed to tie it together.
If you force yourself to write from beginning to end, by the time you get to the parts you're most excited about, you may not be all that excited any more. Catch the wave!
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I'm informed that Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind backwards from the last chapter, and that worked out pretty darned well...my own problem with working from beginning to end is that I often don't get to the interesting parts, 'cause I lose interest in continuing.
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I had a pretty good week, working mostly on my "new" story, but a little revision on my other story as well. As I mentioned last week, it's one of those old ideas I've worked on a lot over the years, but never gotten very far. Come to think of it, it fits that "beginning to end" issue perfectly---till now I never saw my way to link up to the interesting parts.
Also, though, it's one of those stories I seem to be fond of writing, involving just two characters and running ten to twenty thousand words. (Check out my website, it's littered with them.) I do not see a way around that---but I'm writing the damned thing anyway, because (a) writing it is some kind of sick therapy for me, and (b) it'll get it off my consciousness and conscience, and (c) I might find a way to extract and cut something shorter out of it later...
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A vacation with grandkids around lessens the opportunity to write, so I edited and edited and wrote just a little bit.
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@ She Who Must Be Obeyed: I don't think I've ever written a story from start to finish. They don't usually play out in my mind that way. And, on the rare occasion one of them does, I still like writing my favorite scenes first...transfer them from my thoughts to the page while the emotion and the enthusiasm is still fresh...then, I make the time to build a connection with the scenes I don't like, until they become scenes I do like.
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