It is that time of the week again. the time where I post a note in hopes that it prods you into writing. You see the note coming and you get off your duff and open your present work in process, or start something new. Any amount of work added to the project is acceptable. It does not even have to be your project. I list the things that can be writing. be it new writing, editing even if it is someone else's work, poetry, critiquing, blogging, writing assignments, technical writing, world or character creation, even long winded E-mails about writing or story. it really comes down to what you personally decide will be writing. I have not heard any complaints about anything suggested as writing, or how much one has written. the hope is that you develop the habit of opening the project at hand and doing something each week. It would be better to work hours every day, but with life and slackers, just one time during the week will pass for us.
I have written. Last week, I zapped a whole section of a story I have in progress. I have now written fresh, and pulled in pieces of other work to replace the work I removed. it was a great improvement. I am not sure exactly how much new I added. It could be just 600 words but I forgot to record word counts before I added something or removed it. As it is now, the story stands at page 11 with 6320 words. That will be what next week's writing will be measured by. My writing partners and I have exchanged several thousand words in working out details of the story. Little things like how someone will dress has expended a lot of words. We are character and world creating as I write and it is hard to write a detail when you have not given it a thought, and it effects later stories. It is a fun process. Over the past few weeks, I have written scenes to show my image of what someone or something looked like and my writing partners presented their suggestions based on the scenes. This week, I pulled some of those scenes into the story I am working on, which has thrown off the page and word count.
I have 40 story ideas in my compost pile, including what I post tonight. I got an idea ahead earlier in the week, then had a very late evening and did not have time to write that nights presentation, so I am still just up to date. It is fun to have ideas flow like they do. I have suggested many times, if you get an idea, write it down. if it is on a piece of paper or in a "storage file." write down just enough to remind you of what it is. You can then forget it for a while. for me, it is usually about a paragraph, may be two for a detailed idea. When the time comes, sit down and expand it a bit more. tell what the story is about, You don't actually tell the story, just what it is about. For me, it is rare that a story idea gets onto four pages. With it expanded out like that, one can forget it completely, to dig it out when there is a need for something to write. The key I have found, is that a story that draws completely on your creative mind, will become quite after you write what the story is about. Only a few hang on after that. Writing what the story is about, as I suggested, also acts like an outline. it is a guide to what will happen in the story. You have a beginning, middle and end, and can note plot twists. it acts like an outline. If one chooses to go with a change in plot in your work in progress, it takes just a little time to change the quick presentation and see how the plot change effects the whole story. It is also easy to rewrite your presentation since it is short. Even if you write something different, your quick presentation will have the key points you will want to hit. that happened when I converted my original 2 page waxy birth story into a 75 page story. the short piece had the highlights I was after. I went all over the place between the landmarks, but I did get to them eventually, creating a better piece. I know where I am going, and know how to get there, but have enough freedom to let the characters and scenery do their work.
I have to set my mind to get my woodworking ready for the art show. I am running into the problem where Other activities get into the way. I do my woodworking at my Mom's house on the weekends. We have done a whole lot of running around the past several weeks, killing my woodworking. I withdrew my work from the Antique store. I have to go over each piece, examining it for damage and to try to improve the finish on them. I was surprised as to how much stuff I actually had on display there. It turned out to be a whole bin of work. I need to swap out some pieces, but that is likely the amount of wood turnings I will have in my display in the art show at the end of the month. the rest of the display will be carvings.
One of my favorite types of story ideas, is to take something that is utterly silly, especially commercials, and figure out how to make it logical, normal, spin a story around it. I might see something a few dozen times before it locks into my mind as to how to use it. Several years ago, one of the car companies advertized their START BUTTON. One way they did it was to have someone going through great effort, either diving deep under the sea, or climbing an ice cliff. they get into a special place, and there is a button. they push the button, then they are seated in a car, then they are accelerating down the road. while the commercials were popular, I turned that into a story idea. it was a little trap THEY had set. They have hidden the buttons in inaccessible places, then let it be known they existed. What happens is that when a person hits the button, it teleports them to successive places. When the car accelerates, it is teleported to impact on a moon or on another planet. I think I had it as a weapon in a war. It kept the really adventurous genes in the population at a low level also.
As to the question of the week, I can honestly say
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Well I've done a lot of critting and some blogging over the past week...and I am now determined, once my tea and ramen are ready, to get at least some work done on "Jorinda and Joringel."
Posts: 2626 | Registered: Apr 2008
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Not so much, just a blog post. My creative side needs refuelling. Plus, kids crying all night, throwing up, and/or coming into our room at four in the morning has made sleep all but a thing of the past. Time to catch up on that too. While I'd like to hit my goal of another short story written this month, I'm not going to trade my sanity for it.
Posts: 921 | Registered: Nov 2008
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Yes. I worked on the query and synopsis for BLOOD WILL TELL. I did some revisions. A couple of blog posts, which for some reason aren't publishing to Facebook the way they're supposed to. And a tiny little bit of new material on SEVEN STARS.
[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited March 08, 2010).]
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I wrote. Not nearly as much as I had hoped, but got something down on paper almost every day. 'Course, I also deleted a lot of what I wrote the next day, or spent most of my time on reworking what was already there. At this rate, my novel will be done in time for the science fiction to be old and dated.
Most of my progress was in conceptualizing the middle of the book. I have better motivations for some characters, more understanding of the personalities of the secondary characters (though three of them are still tabula rasa), and that leads to conflicts and scenes. I also played around with my main character for the whole series, who for this book acts more as a secondary character. The MC just didn't like where it was in relation to everyone else, so I changed its job. It's happier, even if it's not quite sure what to do with itself.
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I, again, managed to write Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday...but, unlike the week before, just on one work---the original, not the rewrite---at my usual five hundred words a day.
Slow going, though, where I keep changing something about the story every time I sit down. Last time it was the character's names.
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Started a new story idea but not a lot of word count. Planning to get deep into it this week. A few crits too though.
Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009
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Wow, I've been absent from this thread for quite a while.
My word count efforts were down from what I wanted, but I made great strides in world-building, story plotting, and technical researching. In my world, that's all part of the writing effort, so it's 'writing.'
Going over my projected workload for this week, I suspect my near-future word count will skyrocket from last week's count.
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I wrote quite a bit and thought up some fixes for threads that were not working.
I had some great ideas late last night and didn't wake up to write them down...and now I've forgotten half!!! Course sometimes you THINK they're good when you're half asleep, and when you re-read when full awake...not so much. ;D
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I have been a good boy this week. In addition to taking a hard stance and kissing alot of old babies goodbye (Old stories I have had the desire to revisit and rewrite) Instead I have made a final edit on these stories (About seven of them) and put them in a folder titled "submit only". I submitted these strories to sepparate markets and if and when they get rejected, I will simply resubmit them instead of doting over them, revising them everytime they make their way back home. This will clear me up to work on my more recent WIP's and create new stories, which due to my advanced experience level tend to be far better than these old stories. I have also done well in organizing myself to complete the six big projects I have that are due at the end of this month. Several contests and a few stories intended for pro-publication submission. My new outlook on goals is working very well, and I have been really productive. Anywhere between 6 and 10 thousand words a day is my average.
I have also been doing alot of critting, and organizing myself. My new submission tracker I made last month, so cleverly on Excel, got corrupted and I cannot open it. That tremendous let down lead me to return to my Science Labbook submission journal I started two years ago when I made my first submission. Sometimes pencil and paper are just better.
So yes i did write, a lot, and I still have much to write today, so I shall return to it.
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Whoa, Bent Tree. Are those numbers correct? I'm guessing you get along exceptionally well with your internal editor.
Posts: 1139 | Registered: May 2008
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I didn't write. I had surgery a month and a half ago and complications came up. Two weeks ago, I went back into the hospital emergency after I developed all kinds of infection sites. They're finally gone and I came home yesterday. Didn't touch a computer the entire time. Lost a spleen. An interesting thing is when you are in the hospital for such a long period of time, your focus shrinks to your room and your hospital bed.
Here I'm home at last and I'm now catching up on the hatrack discussions. I'm still trying to come up with a story on all this, but my hospital focus isn't gone yet. I still have to recover fro some weeks. I will get something done next week. WotF is coming up, if nothing else.
[This message has been edited by Owasm (edited March 09, 2010).]
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And a tiny little bit of new material on SEVEN STARS.
