December 01, 2008 Did You Write? . Have you met your goal, to write at some time during the week? Here is a place to brag about your accomplishments, cry about your failures. The idea is to try to get something written sometime in the week, every week, so you will have 52 opportunities to work on your project. Of course, one can write every day if desired. The main thing is to develop a habit of either writing every week or writing imaginative excuses for not writing. Of course, what you call is writing is up to you. Here are some possible suggestions as to what I consider writing. I am sure you can add more. Any new writing, of course. Editing, even if it is not yours. Poetry Articles, blogs, Writing assignments. E-mails, if they are wordy and pertain to writing. World building as long as something gets on paper. Of course, you can justify anything else as writing if you feel you need to.
As for me, No, I did not write. I have a pretty good excuse. I had surgery Friday. Getting ready for Thanksgiving, getting ready for surgery, and having other family events happening during the weekend, killed any writing time I might have had. The surgery went well. I had a good book with me to read and never got to read more than a chapter. I was in and out of surgery quickly. The doctor said I almost got bumped again, but the surgery finished on time. I talked to the doctor today as he examined his work. I have 27 stitches. He had to dig deeper into the hand to get a tendon that had ruptured. I now have to go through therapy to get the finger into condition again. Luckily, I can type so I can at least keep up on my story ideas, even if I cannot work on my stories.
As to the story ideas, I have done fairly well in spite my active weeks. I posted 31 story ideas, one more than the days of the month. That puts me 4 story ideas ahead for the year. I ended on page 51 with 30,981 words. That is pretty good for a bunch of pure drivel....
This is going to be one full month. It will be a challenge to get real writing done, the story ideas, with the time I have to do other projects.
On the woodworking front, I am trying to do a Christmas dinner table display. It is taking a long time, just as I expected. It takes an hour to make a plate and I have a bunch of them to make. I have goblets, silverware, and a few other things going but no time to really get things finished. I do have my deer Christmas ornaments nearly finished. I should have more things made but have not had time. Yesterday, the weather and my hand prevented me from doing any work. I figure this dinner display will be a project for the March Art show, rather than Christmas.
I have an excuse. As to the question of the day, No, I did not write.
Did you Write?
Posted by Cheyne (Member # 7710) on :
After crashing and burning and falling almost 30,000 words short in my first NaNoWriMo attempt. I sat down and pumped out 2000 words on my main WIP. Funny how that works. There were many days in November when I had trouble writing 200 words. As I said on the NaNo support group thread, winning or losing, I achieved my goal by reestablishing my writing habit. During September and October I got in a nefarious pattern of taking a night off of writing here and there. Before I knew what was happening I had almost stopped writing. From everyday to once or twice a week, my output dwindled, nay nose-dived. A lot of what I was producing then was flat and will need to be edited out. Participating in NaNoWriMo was a huge success for me because I am excited to write again.
Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :
Yes. I did. I'm at 79.5K and unsure of whether I should break it down into a two part story. I might be able to wrap things up in 20K or so. but I would have another story that would have to be told (the story it was my original idea to write).
Posted by sjsampson (Member # 8075) on :
Yep! Finished nano.
I can't wait to get started on my rewrite.
Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :
Yahoo to nano! I'm back in the writing saddle, having finished 51,393 words in 29 days.
I am hoping to spend December editing my last year's Nano project, with the goal of getting crits soonish, then starting in on final revisions in the new year and querying early next year.
I wrote. Yay! I needed the Nano kick in the pants.
Posted by satate (Member # 8082) on :
I wrote. I've been doing good and meeting my 500 words a day goal. Yay me.
Posted by BenM (Member # 8329) on :
Glad your surgery went ok.
Hmm, yes, Monday saw another few hundred words added to the project I started for NaNo, finishing off another chapter.
Today however, I'm probably not going to be writing anything on the manuscript itself - the last two chapters need to be fleshed out so I feel the end of the novel, even in first draft form, justifies all the effort spent on it so far.
After that I have some synopses to write - all those ideas I've been brewing and bottling up while I concentrate on finishing this project.
Isn't writing fun!? :)
[This message has been edited by BenM (edited December 02, 2008).]
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Tuesday through Friday was a washout---all that Thanksgiving cleaning, then Thanksgiving itself, then a very busy Friday---but Saturday I got back in the saddle and managed five hundred (second draft) words of my current work each day from then till now.
At least working on second draft means I have some idea of when it'll be done. Right now it's at fifty pages...another twenty-five, maybe less, will do it. (I wrote out several thousand words of outline and background that I skip in this draft.) I'm hopeful I can get it done by mid-December, then onto the next set of revisions sometime in January. December has its own unique set of interferences with writing, though.
Posted by Crank (Member # 7354) on :
The actual writing dropped off significantly this past week in favor of physics research---and because I spent Thursday through Sunday stuffing my face!---but I still managed to slip in a few words. S! S!...C!
Posted by steffenwolf (Member # 8250) on :
Surprisingly I got more writing done over the holiday week than in a usual week. We had relatives over to our house, and one of the few activities that EVERYBODY could agree on was watching TV. But only a few TV shows are compelling enough to grab my full interest, so I brought my laptop along.
I did two major rewrites of stories in that time I've got posted to JBU, which seem to have gotten positive responses.
Right now I'm going slowly because the story I set for myself is based on mythology and set in a real historical period, so I want to make sure I get my details correct, so it's research time.
Posted by Rommel Fenrir Wolf II (Member # 4199) on :
No I didn’t write anything toward compleating any of my old works.
But I did take notes when I was laying awake in bed for a new story I thought up as I tried to sleep.
RFW2nd
Posted by aspirit (Member # 7974) on :
Yes, I wrote over 23,000 words of story draft last week in order to "win" NaNoWriMo after slacking the first three weeks of the November.
Posted by tempest (Member # 8242) on :
Yes I wrote. The last couple of days of Nano I added about 5k for a grand total of 25k. Maybe a spectacular flop for Nano but it was an amazing experience for me. I also wrote a couple of poems which I'm working on polishing.
I'm back in the writing saddle, having finished 51,393 words in 29 days.