quote:Welcome to this week's Novel Support Group. Anyone can join. If you're new, tell us a bit about who you are and what project you are working on. Feel free to update the NSG Work in Progress thread with your current projects. Although we can report on any number of things, here is a list of suggestions (suggestions welcomed).
What were your goals last week and did you accomplish them? Describe what you worked on. Set goals for next week. Did you learn something during this week?
Here is a list of things that you can do each week as we work on our novels (suggestions welcomed).
Writing on a novel Characterization World Building Relevant research
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As for me:
Last Week's Goals:
DUAL MAGICS SERIES: As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT. This is here to remind me that eventually I need to get back to this. Yeah. Right.
BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING: Promote through social media. Some.
BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM: Continue read-through/first round of revisions. Done and out to my critique partners.
MAGE STORM: Put on hold. And more time to think things through. Well, it's not on hold anymore. I've done a little work on character backgrounds and I'm working on the map.
DUAL MAGICS SERIES: As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT. This is here to remind me that eventually I need to get back to this.
BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING: Promote through social media.
BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM: Wait for the critiques to come back.
MAGE STORM: Continue working on background. Perhaps start the rewrite.
posted
I offered to write a friend a story about his fantasy, and he wouldn't tell me (too shy? making a good decision?) so I guessed.
Right or wrong, it's a really powerful story that has TOTALLY sucked me in.
THE EXPERIENCE. Currently trying to rewrite the second part to perfect the plot line. Hoping to get to writing more first draft. Wondering how long it will become.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
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Currently looking over the manuscripts I abandoned before I hit the wall and threw aside everything to go on an adventure. Unlike Bilbo, at least all my stuff wasn't being sold when I got back.
luckily, I still have my desk to bang my head upon while I wonder where I'm going to begin.
I've gone from extreme active to sitting at my desk, not a smooth transition. All I really want to do is sleep and enjoy hot food and showers, and a comfortably soft bed. But work hours wait for no one Posts: 634 | Registered: Jun 2010
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The sleep and hot food and showers might not be a bad thing, walexander, as long as it only lasts long enough for you to process the extreme activity so you can use it as grist for the mill of your writing.
(I hope that made sense.)
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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All the study of prose writing gives a writer skills and tools and, on the flip side, justifications to never draft another word from concerns the result churns dreck. Want for masterful words creates a control overburden, want to control each and every raw draft word. Soon, yes, once a raw draft completed, time then for revision and revision. First, though, a draft wants all control abandoned.
A method, my method around stuck writer's block, any of my arts, life changes, onerous chores, yada, is to sneak up on whatever. An action or activity, new to me, say, lathe-turned wood plates, starts from a forecast "learning curve," a low curve apex predicted for an accomplished turner, a quick sprint's easy sneak to full realization.
Nope, new shape, new concept, new ambition, new challenges, new trials and errors -- an onerous marathon after all that refuses realization, itself cause for motivation, "no" from inanimate objects refused as well. Several utter plate failures good for the wood stove first. Next, several dozen miserable, mediocre discs that resemble plate shapes. Next, at last, fully realized plate shapes accomplished. Oh no! moisture changes and released internal stresses move the wood unexpected ways and -- well, mere smallish lackluster-flat wood discs still. Who would buy, or praise even, such dreck!? Maybe a mother.
Back to the draft board the development goes. Oh, larger, decorative shapes wanted. Utility-shaped work okay for my own table; decorative appeals wanted most -- large display shapes. Practice lumber, construction pine, well, only 11 1/4 inch width maximum, 1 1/2 inch thick maximum, length of no concern, economical, though too small, too flat, ho-hum blasé outcomes.
Greater appeal, by-default of costly exotic woods eight or twenty times the cost and much more expensive per board foot for larger dimensions. A hundred dollars for a 3" by 18" by 18" black walnut slab; once shaped, the sole decorative appeal an expensive and uncommon dark wood color, still only wanted at my own table. Still, the wood moves too much. Still, costly feedstock for the wood stove.
The latest plate from the workshop incorporates four woods for color contrast and geometric decorative design appeals: black walnut, spruce, fir, and holly, shapes a decorative pattern and expresses a message. A single five-point white holly star centerpiece, bordered by spruce's striped grain figure, a pentagon of orange-yellow and brown stripes at that, a white fir "gravy" band, and a black walnut rim. A classic dinner plate shape, foot and all, that appeals to homespun patriotic fervor, mystic symbolism imbued, too.
The largest piece of lumber was one inch thick, three inches wide, and eighteen inches long, from a black walnut log free out of a firewood pile, the holly, felled free, too, milled to dimensional stock, fir and spruce construction lumber from workshop scraps. Thirty-four precision-joined pieces total, a decorative segmented wood shape that controls wood movement and cost. The piece, too, contradicts its patriotic message, is sculptural satire. Control's dictates wrested from abandon's freewheels, vice versa and more, too.
"LoneStar and Stripes" the star plate series title, and a dark rim, hah! Five years from initial inception to full realization satisfaction. Early reviews gush universal praise. Other ambitions, too, progress likewise apace. Vase, urn, jar, jug, pitcher, mug, cup, canister, and bowl shapes, plus platters, a full place table set: "Blind Eyes," "Brick and Mortar," "Night Sky Afire," "Thunder Chickens," "Cooky Jar Tales," "Liminal Drams and Drops," "X-Keg." (Study of narrative title arts advanced artware title aptness, too, part of the "story," part of the message.) Artisinal sculpture satire crafts and arts, $$$ and more! Yet approbation -- priceless.
If stuck, endeavor to dash out a word a day, a week, a sentence of dreck for the wood stove. Sneak out a wild-abandoned paragraph gentled forward; a feral wreck about the angered dreck prose writing makes of a gentle writer, maybe. In time, revised and revised, great soaks grow from mere eggcorns.
[Edit: And the art business activities marathons, too.]
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