I've been writing on "Faya" now for close to 3 or 4 months now, and I'm oh so close to the end.

I have to get past the lock on the ending, but I should be done in another week. I write handwritten pages at lunch at the Vo-Tech but other than that I haven't written much here at home. Is that strange to anyone??

Just wondering. Could you wonderful people give me some advice on this??

Thanks as always

Monolith

 

n : a morbid fear of death

I sometimes think that what we call procrastination is really fear of finishing. While ever the story remains unfinished you can imagine that the ending is going to be brilliant, perfect. However, the actual writing of it will narrow your 'dream ending' to real ink and real paper.

It may be brilliant, it may not, but at least it will be finished.

Edit: Good luck

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited October 10, 2005).]
 

Great words of encouragement. I still have to edit the darn thing too. (19254 words now) and I want to trim it to submit it to WOTF for January.

I'm hoping it'll pass the first round of cuts.

I'll get off my butt and finish the thing hopefully this week.

Thanks again Hop.

Your friendly neighborhood Monolith.

This is my first major try at a story of any length. Of course, I wrote a story about 12 yrs ago but that was on my own and I had the time to do it. I'm just excited and nervous about finishing this one. I'm not trying to step on any toes, here, but, this feels like a major accomplishment to me.

Then like in another thread, I'm leaving it open to another novella length sequel. But that is another topic.

The only thing I'm saying is, I'm happy with my progress, and I'm not satisfied with it yet. But I'm going to polish it up and then I'll be happy.

Still not trying to be rude.

Thanks for responding to this post.

-Monolith-
 

There can be a fear of completion, that delays a writer when they're close to the end, but I honestly believe that the closer to the end of a piece of work you get (particularly if it's a long - novella and up - piece), the harder the writing becomes. It may be different for people who write in linear fashion - I have a huge respect for people who can do that; I only started getting anywhere with my writing when I finally broke away from that restriction and started writing key scenes and interesting character bits, and then started weaving things together. For me, there's a great sense of satisfaction when my "@@@@@" markers (which I use to indicate that there's a gap - anything from a single linking sentence to an entire series of chapters) finally start to decrease in number, rather than increase. The only novel I finished felt great when I whittled the markers down from around 30-odd, one by one, until they were in single figures, and finally reached the magic point where I did a search of the document and found no occurrences. But it took me about half as long to do those final 30-odd scenes as to do the rest of the novel.

Basically; the first 90% of the story takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time...
 

The reason I give you this advise is because of personal experience. I have been entering the WOTF contest for about ten years now (not every quarter, since I took about 7 years off inbetween), but quite a lot. I have entered every quarter this year. In the first two quarters, both stories placed in the quarter finals. I really thought I had the contest down by the third quarter, and sent off what I thought was going to be a sure winner, but I was wrong. I cheated myself and didn't give the story time enough to sit, and then didn't edit it well enough. It didn't even place, and it was what I still think is the best story I've written to date. It just wasn't ready.

When I reread it, I saw why. It didn't have a catchy beginning, started too slowly, and there were some errors in it. I didn't catch any of this, or even the obvious errors until after submission because I didn't give it time enough to sit. Stories are like good wines. They have to sit awhile to become good.

So don't cheat yourself and your story by not giving the story time to sit, and by not editing it well enough. This contest is so competitive that your manuscript should be as close to perfect as you can make it. You want it to shine.

Another thing that I noticed about the contest is that they seem to like longer stories, like novelettes, so your target length for this story is good. I've seen them select shorter stories when they are really good too, but a longer story, if good, gets a little more attention I think. As far as cutting it, you shouldn't have much trouble since most writers agree that a second draft is usually 10 to 15 percent shorter than a first, which would put it under the 17,000 limit.

Good luck with the WOTF contest!
 

Ronnie
 

According to the notes in the posthumous Tolkien books, J. R. R. Tolkien finished the narrative portion of "The Lord of the Rings" in one great burst of activity (from the middle of the last book to a point past the end as later published). His son-and-editor Christopher Tolkien seemed at a loss to describe how this could have happened...but, from my own experiences, it seemed clear to me what had happened...
 

Still not finished. always find ways to improve, polish...

Don't worry about the pace of your writing.

Start with an outline of the finish, just jot down the basics of where the story will go and then refine and rewrite that.

 

Oh, and if it ain't fun you ain't doing it write.
 

Procrastination is your mind's way of telling you that something is wrong with your story. Look at your feelings when you go to sit down. Do you think that there are things you'd rather do? Or do you have a sense of dread? Maybe you just feel lost. Each of those reactions, while natural, are often a sign that you've taken a wrong turn someplace.

The story will come when it comes might work, but if you don't sit down and write it won't come at all.

When I've procrastinated at the end of a story it was almost always because I had made a mistake earlier in the story or was about to write the wrong ending. Figure out why you are procrastinating and that will tell you how to stop.

Finally, if nothing else works, sit down and just write the next word in your story. That's all, just one word. Now repeat. Sounds stupid, but it works.