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April 28-08 Did You Write? . This is an attempt to humiliate myself, and all of you, into writing each week. The idea is to give a deadline to show that something was done. Being each week, it is an easy deadline to try to meet (yeah right!!!). For me, it is an attempt to prove that I am not dragging society down with my worthlessness because I did not write this week. Sometimes It works, sometimes it does not. What is considered writing is fairly open. It is new writing, of course. It is also editing, even if it is someone else's. It can be poetry, articles, heavy blogging, ane even E-mail writing as long as it is a lot of words and is about writing. AS to the question of the day, I am hesitant to make the claim, but I will say Yes I did write. Most years, along with all my science fiction story ideas, I also write romance story ideas. These have a romance slant, but are more telling what the stories are about. I was a story idea behind this weekend, so on Sunday, I sat down to write a story idea. I had a scene bouncing around in my mind for about a month that I knew could be a romance story idea, but was not right for it. I opened my word editor and started writing the scene. It flowed off the keyboard and was a lot of fun to write. When done, I wrote 3307 words and was on page five, which is very long for any story idea. The scenes did not fit the format of a romance, but I chose to post it as my first romance story idea of the year. I also posted it in my science fiction and fantasy story ideas. Sunday night, I wrote an addendum to the romance story idea that did not get applied to the fantasy and science fiction story ideas. That was about three hundred words giving direction to the story itself beyond the scenes. Since it was five pages long, I am going to count it as writing. That is a lot of writing and it killed the morning. It was also so much fun.
On the story ideas, I posted seven story ideas since I last wrote, and still have sixteen story ideas next to my keyboard. I like a lot of choices each night. What I need to do is to concentrate on writing the really bad story ideas, getting them out of my hair before they start decomposing in my compost stack. Having half a month's story ideas by the keyboard is always nice. Most of them are pretty good.
Last week I mentioned that the plug of my lathe was bad which was why I had to carve rather than turn. This weekend, I made use of it and mostly finished the bird house. I do have to drill a bunch of holes and add hardware for hanging, for locking the roof on, to have an access hole, but otherwise it is nearly finished. It came out a lot better than I expected. Over the past two years, I have seen bowls in the magazines where it is just a swirl of leaves. I have wanted to make one from the moment I saw one. I picked out a bowl that was not good and decided I was going to carve that into the leaves. Saturday, I found a leaf that would work, traced it on paper and cut it out, then traced the paper onto the bowl, and then painted the leaves to make them stand out, to eliminate some immediate confusion. I sanded off my first attempt and repainted it with a slight design change. When I had a design I could live with, I looked at it for the rest of the day, and most of Sunday morning. In the afternoon, I forced myself to go to the bandsaw and start removing wood outside the leaves. Working from the rim, I could remove a lot of wood easily. The first cut was the hard part, I was taking a perfectly good bowl and "ruining" it. Once the blade caught the wood, it became easy. I was basically committed. The painted outside looks better than the inside mainly because I have to remove some spaces the bandsaw cannot touch. I will use grinders to remove the inner spaces and then will be able to start shaping and thinning the leaves. The wood is really thick as it was one of my early bowls. I am now excited about the project. It will be
For a story idea using the above, She is considering having her body rebuilt for a special living style. One suggestion is to lighten her body, removing any tissue that does not have to exist, and to receive wings, eventually being able to fly. There is difficulty in making the decision to start the process. Because of modern techniques, she won't feel even discomfort from the process, but it will take some time to complete. She finally gets her courage together and goes in for the first surgery. When she comes out later that day, with her hips reduced, she is now excited about the process. It is a step towards her dream. The rest of her corrections are easy after the first one.
Another concept is that he has a classic car. It is a carbureted car that runs on gas while the modern cars use atomic power. he wants to rebuild it, make it look like new. The problem is that it is worth a lot more in its existing condition since the paint job is original. It is also badly rusted. He finally grabs his saw and hacks off a whole section of rusty sheet metal. He will replace it with new sheet metal. Once he made the first cut, he excitedly removes other rotten metal. When he is done with his session, it looks sick, but he can see how it is going to look good when it is done.
As to the question of the day, I am going to say YES, I DID WRITE.
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After my mishap, I started snooping through the old idea file and wrote three flash pieces this week. Two have beeen workshopped, edited, and submitted. One to go. Lots to do still, but the distraction and accomplishment was nice. Back to more serious projects.
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Somewhat sporadic...but Saturday opened up and I managed to do five hundred words of one story and one thousand of another. (The latter, the one I started a ways back, reached the final scene, and these things always go faster when I get closer to the end. It's still some words away from being done, though probably within the week if I keep at it. And besides, it commands me to start a new draft as soon as possible.)
Also, I'm approaching an enforced week-off-from-writing, where I go away for a week on vacation. I don't take a computer---I could, but it'd just be one more thing to worry about leaving behind---last vacation, I did leave an expensive pair of shoes and had to have the hotel send them to me. I do take an typewriter---its case makes an excellent place to put small and delicate objects---but only rarely do I use it to do any writing while on the road. No time.
The leadup time to the vacation also tends to be devoid of most writing, as cleanup and shopping and such consume bigger chunks of time. I'll see what happens; I've got, oh, a little over ten days before it starts...
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Yes. Broke 43k and 200 pages on my novel. not the most productive day wordwise but did think through a wall that had arisen in the past week.
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I've really been struggling this week. I've got a lot going on in my life at the moment (which is no excuse!) but the words just haven't been coming. On the plus side, I did manage to finish a dark fantasy/horror story of 5800 words, of which I might post the first 13 -- if dark fantasy/horror is ok on Hatrack :-)
So, to answer the question, yes, I have written, but only just!
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I wrote the first chapter of my novel. I'm really excited about this. I'll find my mind wandering, wondering what's going to happen next in the novel I'm reading, and then I realize I'm thinking about the novel I'm writing. Really awesome.
(I've also written 4 1/2 term papers, if that counts)
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