Did You Write? May 5th, 2008 . It is time to prove to the world that you were not a wasted drag on society by not writing at least once during the week. I use this as an incentive to sit and write even just a little. I don't like posting this note without having something to say about my writing. I post this anyway, but I just don't like being a worthless miserable bum when it comes to writing. I am lose about what can be considered writing. New writing, of course, editing, even if it is someone else's work, poetry, articles, blogging, E-mails but only if they are long and are about writing, school writing assignments, just to name a few. If you decide "this is writing," then I guess it is. For me, My story ideas should be called writing, but I don't count them that way simply because they are done every single day, like a newspaper column. I count what I do outside of them as writing. For some of you, my story ideas would be writing. If I was not doing them on a daily basis, I would count them as such. AS for me, I did do some writing. In the woodworker/fairy war story, I wanted a couple scenes in the story. I wrote two pages (1377 words) of the scenes in a separate file. My plan is to write the new scenes, then insert them into the main story, and make the overall changes around the scenes. I never got around to the Waxy story.
Including tonight's story idea, I have seventeen story ideas sitting next to my keyboard to be posted. This is with seven posts during the week. I do have fun with these story ideas. many of you complain about ideas harassing you while you are working on your main story. I write those concepts down, first on a piece of paper to remind me of what it is, and then as what amounts to a bad synopsis to really fill out the story. If it is strong enough, I can always develop it even more. The beauty of what I do is that once I have written it out, usually after about an hour, I can forget about the concept entirely. It is gone, at least until I dig into my posts again. I have been so busy that I have not had any opportunity to even consider digging into them.
We have yard sales most weekends down here. In some areas they are called tag sales, garage sales, etc. People gather their junk and put them out on display and others come by to buy "goodies" at a bargain price. I have found valuable (at least to me) treasures at such sales, and my mom is a master yard-saler. she knows where to look to find the best deals. This weekend, on the way to breakfast, we found a yard sale where all sorts of equipment was on sale. the guy retired and was getting rid of his work stuff. I purchased some jewels. After lunch, my mom suggested we stop and check out the yard sale again. The guy was packing up. He gave us several trays of pieces, parts, screws, and such, plus a tool box with some stuff in it. When we and another person was done, he had almost nothing left. The fun part came when we went through the stuff later in the day. that was fun, seeing what treasures we ended up with. Most of it was not of any real value, but there were a couple gems in there. Nothing spectacular, but things we were happy to get. It is one of those "your junk is interesting, mine is just junk.
To use the above in a story, one would have a salvage yard that is closing down. Anything of real value is taken out of the place. There are simply odds and ends laying about. The character is given permission to clean up and keep whatever is left. He leaves with a bin of stuff when done. The character then picks through the stuff and finds use for just about everything, which is wonderful. A lot of it he would never consider buying.
Well, as to the question of the day, I can say Yes, I did write.
Did you write?
Posted by Bent Tree (Member # 7777) on :
I wrote a shell of the hardest scene I have ever written. I roughed in a short story also. Did two chapters of my mentors memoirs. Busy busy. Tonight I need to READ and crit.
Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :
Yes. I did. I am. I'm still pounding away on my newest entry. (And I watched the entire series of Firefly between yesterday and this morning. Now I've got to watch Serenity again. )
Posted by cklabyrinth (Member # 2454) on :
Well, I wrote another flash challenge this weekend. I also quit procrastinating and have written about 1500 words of a short story that's been stewing in my head for a while.
Posted by RobertB (Member # 6722) on :
I finished editing a section of my novel. Only one more section to go, a final runthrough, and, hopefully, it'll be done at last.
[This message has been edited by RobertB (edited May 06, 2008).]
Posted by Crank (Member # 7354) on :
I put the young adult novel aside for about a month in order to concentrate on several short stories. One of them is complete (letting it sit for a week before I perform my final read-through), one needs only a bit of touch-up work concerning my MC's consistency throughout the story, and the third requires a bit more scientific research.
During this time, two of my short stories came back with rejection slips. I gave one of the stories a read-through, enhanced it where I felt was needed, and sent it out to a different mag.
The second rejected story received several hand-written notes from the readers. This, in my mind, is a map to my treasure chest. They pointed out a few issues that I myself suspected were questionable (of course, these thoughts don't cross my mind until after I submitted it), so knowing what to enhance and how to enhance it is that much clearer. Despite these critiques, the reviewers were highly complimentary about my ideas. One reviewer wrote: "Very good story, excellent actually." Reading comments like this, coupled with knowing that the issues pointed out to me will be easy to correct, leads me to believe I'm almost there with this one.
quote: (And I watched the entire series of Firefly between yesterday and this morning. Now I've got to watch Serenity again. )
I'm expecting the fourth disk of Firefly from NetFlix tomorrow. Not a bad series...the characters have definitely captured my interest.
S! S!...C!
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
A little sporadic, but I pushed one of my works to a conclusion, printed that draft out yesterday (preliminary to rewriting it), and kept apace (at five hundred words a day, most days) on my other story.
Of course it's getting a bit crowded with an impending vacation and assorted preps for that. This morning I got up at six AM (I slept late), weedwhacked and cut my lawn from seven thirty to nine forty-five, washed up from that, went out at ten twenty, got my hair cut, stopped at Philly Junction to pick up lunch for me and my parents, got to their house at twelve and ate there, came back home briefly (when you gotta go, you gotta go), went out again at twelve-forty-five, shopped at the local Best Buy and Books-a-Million, stopped at Publix to buy groceries (also for me and my parents), dropped off groceries at my parents's house, then got back home at three where I went through my usual online stuff before coming to this site. Up ahead, I've got to cook dinner for me and my parents (sloppy joes, easy enough), then, maybe, squeeze some writing in before I go to bed, probably between seven and eight.
(I live a filled life, if not necessarily a fulfilling one.)
Posted by Jo1day (Member # 7800) on :
For the first time ever I wrote an entire first draft of a short story from beginning to end, one that just might work later. This is more of a triumph because of the things that I did not do:
1)I did not stop and look at the beginning and say "Gee that's poor beginning, I'd better rewrite it until I get it right"
2)I did not blow thing whole thing into novelistic proportions (I have the habit of doing that and then giving up).
3)I did not decide to write a story of earth shattering importance that would MEAN something to people. Not that I intentionally set out to do this, but a great deal of my stories have been sideswiped by the sudden desire for them to be absolutely crystal-clear perfect.
4) The story did not metamorphose on me even once. (This happens to me a lot. My "magnum opus" if you will, has only generated the amount of material that it has because the story keeps changing on me. <Curse you, magnum opus!> )
So I'm grateful to be alive today, and to have finished a first draft. Sadly, I don't really feel like going back and polishing it. Maybe I will in the future. Right now I need to finish writing my Senior Thesis for Music Theory . . . (excuse me)
Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :
Yes. I reworked part of Ghosts and added to a new story for the return to the moon contest.
Posted by TheOnceandFutureMe on :
I wrote. I critiqued a story and polished one of my own to send it off for submission.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I won't be around to catch this when it comes around next week, as tomorrow morning I'm leaving on vacation for a week and leaving computer behind. (Yes, I can leave and not worry about going online---it means a good deal of catching up when I do get back---but I'm not one of those who feels the need to be constantly connected, I guess. I don't even like talking on the telephone.)
But in the four days since my post above I managed to write on two of those days, on the so-called "second story" I mentioned---and it seems to be going well. I doubt if I'll have any more time today or during the vacation itself, unless I quickly scribble down some poem or story idea or something...
I'll be back sometime after next Sunday and will take things up from there...
)