AS an attempt to entice me into writing, I post these notes to force myself to produce some writing, or to come up with imaginative reasons why I did not accomplish one simple weakly goal. My punishment for missing my goal is to write a story's worth of explanation as to why I failed. This is also an opportunity for you to brag about your accomplishments or cry about your failures, and invent reasons for either. I consider writing to be just about anything, new work, of course, editing, even if it is someone else's, world building as long as something goes on paper, poetry, or an article. Now for my wonderful confession about this week. I got kidnaped by space aliens and had to save the universe, defeating the evil ones and setting up a new government. I then found out that I should have been fighting for the evil ones and trying to destroy my allies. Destroying them was a bit more difficult as they know some of my secrets and tactics. Once I had full control over the universe, I decided to dress everybody up like clowns and operate like one large circus (a definite improvement over what they had) and leave them to try and sort things out. I really did want to save the universe, but decided to let it remain Buddhist. I got behind on my story ideas early in the week because a very close writer friend is in the hospital for very dicey heart surgery. My writing partner happens to be the one watching over him, seeing to his affairs and I talked with her on the phone during story idea writing times. My normal story writing time is Sunday Mornings. Because I will be missing a day of story idea writing this week, I had to get caught up. The Sunday morning story idea I wrote ended up three pages, rather than the normal one to two page story idea. I did not have time to do any other writing before I had to start my day.
I am, today, caught up on my story ideas. Last week, I have basically three piles of notes to take my story ideas from. One list has 170 ideas that might never see the light of day. My second pile has 64 story ideas which are writeable and just needs an excuse to dig into them. My third pile is brand new ones I got fairly recently and now has five story ideas in it. Last week, I had to dig into my second stack because I went blank on new stuff. Posting daily, I still gained five story ideas within a week. The story ideas are fun to write, and possibly two of them each month is well worth developing. I get a lot of people who love to simply read them. Lately, I am adding more details to my story ideas than I used to, some are very close to finished short stories. Sometimes I even cut back just to keep it from going too long. Taking an hour to get those raging ideas on paper is an excellent exorcize. I find many times that some story that is demanding to be developed, becomes quite once I tell about what the story is. I can always go back and write more on them if they are still strong, but what is great, is that you can completely forget about them until the time comes to write something. You have what the story is about and can work from there. Another great feature of telling what a story is about, is that it can be the guide for your work in progress. You can see roughly what the story plot is, and how to get there. If you choose to make changes in the plot, you change the story idea first, and see how it is going to effect the rest of the story. I have never done a synopsis, but it might make it easier to write a synopsis, if it is not the synopsis itself.
I have a dozen projects to work on, and only enough time to work on one or two in allotted times. I am making two bird bowls right now. One is a rooster, and I have the head and tail done and ready to add to the bowl itself, and I am doing a duck which needs more work. The duck head I carved this weekend from a block of wood. My sales of my wood projects have purchased all the tools and materials I get. This Christmas I made some sales. this weekend I purchase some carving tools. They are nice, but not really needed. They did make detailing the bird heads easier. I do have access to tools that could have done the same thing as these new tools, but these are easier for me to use. For a story idea, you might have a mechanic who has repaired space ships with available tools. He sometimes has to "make do" with what he has. He gets the opportunity to get tools just for the job. Suddenly he can do the work in half the time, or with half the effort, or able to do the repair without breaking something else.
So, to the question of the day, I must admit that No, I did not write.
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Since the last time I wrote on the subject, I have gain about 3k words. I am not where close to the level that I hoped to be at, but that is mostly due to my hands being injured still. I did spend some time building up my world and things about it. I am at thirteen days in a row that I have written as at least a little bit. Some days I turn out about 1k a day, but usually I only get a few hundred. I hope when my hands heal back to normal I can resume by writing levels that I want.
Posts: 80 | Registered: Oct 2007
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I've decided on a new strategy on my WIP which involves more character work. I've identified key scenes I want to write from my characters' pasts, and man have I had fun with it!
Unfortunately, the character that really needs it I've been lagging on, making me wonder if, again, I should consider cutting her out of it, but that involves writing a completely different story than the one I've already written in my first draft and I'm just not sure I'm ready to let go of that yet. So I'm going to give this a shot and see if I can't flesh her out and coax some of her history out of her.
On this project, I've probably written some 28,000 words this week. Not too shabby, me thinks. Amazing what you can do if you don't let yourself surf the internet!
I got a few crits done but I think I'm behind (sorry folks who I owe crits to! I'll get on it, I promise).
What else? I've absolutely got to rewrite some short stories and start submitting. But man, i really really really just want to get my WIP finished, at least the second draft of it.
[This message has been edited by annepin (edited January 14, 2008).]
I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the two main projects I'm working on and even more time worrying about my upcoming book release... then I started reading the Ender series where I left off a few years ago.
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I edited; does that count as writing? And I wrote 300 words of a short story I just had write, then didn't write anymore when I decided it was too cliche.
Struggling to come up with an idea for my WoTF story and hindered by suddenly feeling very ill last night.
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I came up with three new short / flash fiction story ideas during my commutes this past week. And I actually remember all the details I came up with! Hmmm...toting that digital recorder with me every day turned out to be a better decision than I thought...!
The young adult novel is shaping up quite nicely. Even the infamous section seven is making sense.
I decided to hit the story line to my SF novel full tilt, a few weeks ahead of schedule. I'm glad I did, because I managed to come up with an additional idea that I think will make the sequence of events much more challenging for those living through them.
One of my fellow Hatrackers is reading through the first two scenes of "Beyond the Conscious Breath."
Oh...I submitted my biology-based SF short story, "Trophic Decrescendo"! A great way to top off a fairly productive week.
S! S!...C!
[This message has been edited by Crank (edited January 15, 2008).]
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I did, but barely. I finished the first draft of a 500 word literary piece I started last week, so 500 words over a week seems weak, and now it seems almost unapproachable. I thought I was writing a short story and ended up with a prose poem. Not sure where I'm going with that...
I have been feeling very frustrated with the commercial aspect of the writing. I feel that all I do, now that I've submitted a couple of pieces, is wait to see what new rejections show up. I have progressed, I guess, from form rejections to personal rejections, but I have been unable to focus on building a new story, even though I started two that I've posted in the first 13 section over the last 2 weeks.
Time to forget about submissions for a while and return to the goal of writing.
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I blogged, I wrote some publicity materials, I picked at my second novel, I picked at the revision of my sculpture book (which I need to get serious about revising! A deadline is LOOMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I need to stop messing around and get back to work on it, but what I WANT to do is play with my second novel (which is complete in first draft form). Too bad life gets in the way of "wanna's"!! Argh.
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I recorded old handwritten notes from scrap paper and got them into a text format -- next step is place them into my extended outline. Does that count?
Posts: 785 | Registered: Mar 2007
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I actually did, for the first time in a few days. This is my 5th attempt at opening a novel I've been planning for a while, and finally my approach feels right. (About 10,000 words of trying later...)
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