Developing the habit of writing regularly is important in writing. Many here write every day. While we do want to hear from you, that is not the people this note is for. There are those who write a few weeks a year, getting out of the habit of writing. The goal of this note is to get you to write every week. the way it works is that you are requested to report how much you wrote each week, even if you do not write, and if you wish, tell about what is going on in your life. Knowing the note is coming up, the hope is that you will not want the week to end without reporting that you wrote, so you will open some work, new or in progress, and apply yourself to it, so you can announce you did something.
How much you wrote, and what you wrote is not important. That you wrote is. I happen to be shrinking the word count (editing) of a story in progress so my word count is gong backwards. This shows that how many words you actually report is unimportant.
I have suggested in previous notes what is writing, so I won't bother listing them here. The answer is always, "if you have to ask if it is writing, the answer is yes.
I am trying to remove ten thousand words from my work in progress. I thought I was doing well. I just did a spell check and am deflated. All the work I did this week, I removed two thousand words, about two pages. I see part of my problem is I have made several passes of the beginning and have barely touched the last half of the story. I would be editing along and see a change that would effect the beginning and go back and correct that, then work my way back up to where I was before. It is also an easier part of the story to work with. I see now I am doing a lot of polishing, not hacking. I do see scene themes I can remove once I tackle the last part of the story. Now that I have spent a week of hard writing, I feel I wasted the week with the lack of results I got.
One way I have gotten extra time to write, is I have devastated my story idea writing time. I have cut back how much I have written in the story ideas. Instead of commonly going onto page three, I am now barely going onto page two. I have stopped showing the story and gone back to simply telling what the idea is about, telling the example of how it could be used. I am also not posting every single day, staying off the boards on some days to get more time writing. Being a board addict, this is tough. Now I just have to use my new found time more productively.
Some revisions of course. And two updates to my blog. But, most importantly, new writing on MAGE STORM. I finished chapter 4, wrote chapter 5 and am starting chapter 6. Back in the flow!
[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited July 19, 2010).]
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Yes! I finished the first draft of my next WOTF entry (I told myself I couldn't watch anymore True Blood or Doctor Who until I had the story out for critique -- how's that for motivation?). And I'm working on a blog entry for Flash Fiction Chronicles.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2008
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Finished a round (hopefully the last or nearly so) on a short story and made a little progress on another short.
Posts: 2626 | Registered: Apr 2008
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I continued teaching myself to write a better female POV, I have a story that I wouldn't even post online ever for that.
Posts: 41 | Registered: Jun 2010
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I finished the first draft of my WotF entry for the 4th Qtr. I think it will actually be submitted in pretty much the same form, with some rewrites of course. I probably put in nearly 5,000 words this week on it--a slow starter.
I did a flash and worked on novel planning.
I felt pretty productive, even though I had a three day conference to attend.
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I kept up on my typewritten-page-a-day story, but it kinda tapered off under the pressure of everyday life...Friday I was interrupted after a few lines and didn't get back to it...Sunday and Monday I skipped it owing to extreme busyness...but, overall, I think I'm only a page or two away from the end and I can try my hand at other things, like rewriting some of the ones I've finished and haven't worked on in months.
(One thing about working on a typewriter...the quotation marks are on different keys, up in the upper register of the numbers, and, after doing it for awhile, I find I keep doing it here. Awkward, to stay the least...)
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Yes I did. Rewrote a couple scenes, and only have 1 more scene to finish my story. And got 2 new ideas coming down the pipeline. And the coolest of all, I met Snapper over the weekend. A long time coming but, he was finally in New Hampshire when I had some free time.
Posts: 1168 | Registered: Mar 2008
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Thought I'd add that I did finish that thing I mentioned up...yesterday I typed out a page, then another one with just six more lines on it. I think I'll retype it into my computer...but that's probably it.
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