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January 19th, 2009. Did You Write? . I noticed the world is a bit colder again.... I wonder why.... Could it be that I did not write this week again? It could just be that it is winter. This note is intended to prod myself, and hopefully the rest of you, into writing each week. The concept is that you know the note is coming, and you will work in a bit of free time to write, otherwise, you will find yourself admitting that you have not yet made weekly writing into a habit. that is not fun. Of course, what you consider writing is really up to you. Here are some suggestions, but this list is not all encompassing. You just have to justify what you consider writing, as writing, and then it is. For me, Any new writing, is writing. That is obvious. What is not always obvious is Editing, even if it is the work of someone else, is writing. Poetry is writing. World building, I believe, is writing, as long as something gets onto paper. Blogging, Article writing, Writing assignments, are all writing in my opinion. E-mails could also be writing, as long as it is very wordy and pertains to writing. There may be others if you use your imagination.
I had a club meeting this week and that set me behind on my story ideas, which then eliminated my story writing time. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it.....
As of tonight, I am a story idea behind for the month, but have two weekends to catch up so that is not a problem. There was a question about my story ideas as to what they are. I posted a link to one of the many places I post them. What my story ideas are, is a sentence or paragraph concept, which I expand into a couple pages, spinning a story around the concept to show other authors how the concept might be used. Sometimes, though, the concept gets lost within the telling. That does not bother me. I will take a thought such as ,SUMMER FESTIVAL GOES ON IN SPITE A WINTER TYPE FREEZE. I would take that concept and spin a story around it, showing how fish tanks are frozen, seals and other arctic animals running around, but people are having fun in the festival anyway. Something like this will end up nearly two pages, never more than four. Most are more like telling what a novel is about, but some are nearly finished short stories. The hope that some author would look at the presentation, and decide that some feature of the story, either the initial concept, or some facet of the presentation, sparks interest and become a publishable piece of work. I work from the concept that if twenty people wrote from one of my ideas, they would end up with twenty different stories. One guy started a novel based on one concept I posted, and what he was coming up with ended up having little to do with what I posted. That is the nature of writing. I take pride in averaging an idea a day, usually actually writing an idea a day, but do have the ability to "catch up" on my story ideas if needed. The best year I have done, was to write 465 ideas in a year, a hundred story ideas extra. The worst was year before last, where I did only four ideas extra. I post these story ideas on many bulletin boards, I prefer to send people to http://www.xprodigy.net/board/ and you are to scroll down to Writer's Roost. You will seen notes with titles similar to January 2009 Writing Ideas. There is one for each month.
On the woodworking front, I had finished my baby dragon carving, rushed the painting of it, trying to copy a wax candle I have, and blotched it. It was passable, but not presentable. I stripped the paint off, made some little corrections that bugged me, and re-sprayed it with the my base coat of white again. The little corrections made a big difference in the personality of the baby dragon. I will now paint it, slowly, taking as great care as My ham-handed abilities will allow. Last year, someone asked me to do a Viking/Celtic tree of life carving. I did not do it right but he had to tend a booth up in the northern part of the state at the time. I decided to give the tree another try, this time, not making it as stylized. I just finished carving it this weekend, and just now finished painting it. It looks pretty good. I have a bit of touch up, and to varnish the wood, then it will be ready for the fair which starts at the beginning of this next month. I also made some earrings. I have no idea if they will be something someone likes or not. I was copying something I saw someone else made, then, when done, realized that theirs were oval, not round. That is known as a learning curve. I accepted to be in an art show on February 7th. This is a new show tied in with a city celebration. I doubt I will sell, but I will be there anyway. Of course, I have the art show I am part of every year which will be April 5th. I did well last year, but doubt I will sell anything this year. I am always surprised. I have a lot of work to do and don't know if I will have all the stuff I want available, available. I am a pro-crastinator. I am not an amateur.
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I've been hijacked! The story I wanted to work on finishing is still sitting there on a blank page. The new story, however, is now five chapters and almost 8000 words long. (My early chapters tend to be short.) Plus another 6500 words of bits and pieces for later in the story.
Well, at least I can say that I definitely wrote.
Oh, and I haven't accomplished much else this weekend, obviously.
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Still nothing...though I think it's time to end my creative recharging / rest and just get back to it. I'm in the second day of three days off (essentially Sunday morning to Wednesday night). Yesterday I caught up on a few household tasks, like taking down Christmas decorations and cleaning floors. Sometime later today, I think I'll manage something. (There's the inauguration coverage, important for me to keep an eye on, or at least an ear, but I can write around doing that easy enough.)
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I once read some advice somewhere that has treated me very well. Set aside one hour per day for writing. Let your friends and family know not to disturb you during that hour. You don't have to write during that hour, just sit in the place where you usually do your writing. If you can't write, you have to sit there staring at a blank screen.
I've never sat there the entire hour without writing anything. Some days I've written very little - maybe 50 words. It was something though, and at the end of the week there are always days in which I write a decent amount and days that are painful.
It does help prevent the syndrome you're talking about though - going an entire week without writing. Piling all your available writing hours into one day or time period is dangerous. If you miss that one day you're suddenly so behind you can't really catch up.
That's just my way (adopted from someone else's way)
Where I get confused is when I'm thinking about what counts as writing during the hour? Does only drafting count, does outlining count? Certainly daydreaming doesn't count as it can be done anywhere, anytime. I've been limiting myself to drafting and editing (no proofing, do that in a coffee shop) during the time. Writing and rewriting only during the hour.
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I did try to get my HIGH DIVER story actually finished and then found out through CL Lynn that it has some major flaws in it. So it's been put on a back burner possibly for good... though that could change.
I've now turned my attention back to my novella about the horse abuser. I'm sprucing it up with some editing and hope to have it ready for critiquing sometime soon.
Then while all this is happening; I'm continuing a detailed outline to turn the horse abuser story into a novel. I feel this outline has been coming along very well, though I'm somewhat stalled out on where I am with it right now. Just a temporary setback. I'm not about to give up on it. It's too good of a story .
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Several false starts. Well, not totally false starts, I think they're good story beginnings, but I didn't have a great idea for how to continue them.
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I did get a little start on writing. Printed up one old story and started editing another.
On the one story, I have to revise 'cause some of the scenes bear an unfortunate resemblance to scenes in the movie "Wall-E." I think I can get rid of them, 'cause they were add ons not in the original plot, but---well, no wonder "Wall-E" resonated for me. There I was, writing something just like what's in that movie, without having seen it yet!
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Yep. 3 weeks in a row, havent done that for like 6 months now. It is good to back in the swing. Finished, and polished to the level of crits for another short story, and begun outlines of the 3rd for the month. My goal was 3. I will still have to polish the 1st as it had some things that needed tweeking, but feel very good so far.
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I changed my mind, and took my young adult novel out of circulation just long enough to revisit the last several scenes. My MC goes through the realization of a cherished life's goal for him, as well as a major psychological change of heart, all within the last two dozen pages, so I'm making sure everything is coherent to both him and the readers. At the same time, I'm resisting the urge to add completely new scenes...I wrote a few, I just didn't add them...they'll be apart of the sequel.
Early report: I'm extremely happy with the improvements, and I've not once attempted to rewrite the entire story. That's noteworthy for me.
The novel will be back in circulation by the end of the week. Then, it's back to my SF novel.
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Yes. I am happy to say that my WIP has started to wind down towards an appropriate ending (it is in sight, though not close). This is because I realized that my original story arch could not be contained in one book, but that it could be broken down into three distinct and manageable parts. Doesn't everyone want to write a trilogy?
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