Another week has arrived. It is time to brag about your accomplishments, cry about your failures, and otherwise tell about what is going on in your life.
This note is a prompt to get some of you to write regularly. By posting every week, whether you wrote or not, is likely to get you to start writing every week so you don't have to say you failed. This note helped me a lot until I got a regular project that took my full attention and time.
We are not concerned with how much you wrote, though we love to get some accounts. What you write does not matter. If you have to ask "does this count?, the answer is yes. Getting words down on anything is a good way to develop the skills needed for writing. Editing might require the reduction of words, rather than the addition of words. Any change in your work counts, even if the word count does not change.
I have been writing. I am editing, trying to cut down the word count on my Waxy dragon story. Today, I clipped off the entire ending, setting that to the side as the start of the third story. For that one, I know what I need to include to set up the whole world for the rest of the Waxy stories that will be coming, but how to get it together in an adventure is going to be tough. My original third story was not an action adventure. Except for a couple scenes, nothing of interest happened. It was set up as setup. My writing partner suggested to make it cloak and dagger, and I do have some ideas on how to do that. By removing the end of the story, I dropped the work from 26000 words to 22000 words. I have to now cut it to 15,000 words. I hate to see it, but I am going to have to cut a few more scenes. One scene has been bothersome as it is too long. I completely rewrote it, but only removed a page. I just now have an idea of how to cut it down more. It won't be as "tasty," but might get it to work. I will talk to my writing partner about it.
On the story idea front, I have 55 story ideas in my compost pile. I am in that period again where ideas are flowing. It is a lot of fun. Other than them building up, I would love to keep the ideas coming this fast always. the new ideas are always exciting to write. There is something special when you dig into something that seems like it will be the story to remember. That is one thing I love about story ideas. I get that giddiness of starting a brand new project. I get the satisfaction of finishing a project. the two points are only a few hours apart, and I don't have to edit the stupid thing. It is also nice to have all these great thought available for me to dig into when I need something to write.
In my woodworking, this week was the start of my 11th year of carving. I started because I realized my dad was in his 80s and I did not want that “I wish I had said, I wish I had done” sort of situation. We had good times together and I developed a wonderful hobby. I am much better than when my dad died five years ago, but I am not even close to being as good as he was. He took lessons from the top masters in carving. I learned on my own and did things my own way. The saying of “A self made man is a prime example of unskilled labor,” is true... Over the past few months, I have acquired a number of tools. These are more like accessories rather than actual tools. What they have done is to expand what I can do. For my wood turning, I really need only one more tool, which I can make if I put my mind to it. With that tool, I can do just about anything. It would improve my work too. As it is, a number of my tools have opened up my horizons. My brother made me a drill bit extension. This allows me to drill over a foot into some project. Years ago, I started making a wooden cannon toy. My concept was for the cannon to be highly polished. My turning skills were not up to where it is now, and also I could not drill longer than my drill bit. I now can drill the entire thing out, finishing the cannon. I just have to locate it somewhere in the depths of the storage shed. The new tools opened all sorts of horizons. I get that feeling of being able to do just about anything.
Using the above as a story idea, He made things. His work was simple, unimaginative. He found an alien tool and purchased it, not really knowing what it was or what it did. It was in with some other junk. He found that the alien tool was able to improve his work. He found he cold do more work with it. He searched all over and found another alien tool. it took a bit to learn to use, then he started doing more creative work, better work. Over time, he developed an alien tool powered workshop where he was creating unbelievable work. It was still the same kind of work he did before he got the tools, but they were master works, works of art. He finds he needs one more tool to do everything he would really like to do. He searches far and wide for it and finally gets it. He gets it home and after a learning curve, is doing everything well beyond his dreams. One night an alien ship lands in his back yard and alien storm troopers come in. all his precious alien equipment is hauled out of his shop. They rough him up a little as he is trying to stop them. they are then gone. at first he feels lost. then he thinks about what each tool did, and makes something that can do the same thing, just cruder, all manual adjustments. it takes him several years, but soon he is making the same work he did before, but he knows the aliens are never going to take these away.
Most of my accomplishments from this past week were in the form of edits, but I wrote out a few new scenes for my upcoming young adult series.
S! S!
Posted by Foste (Member # 8892) on :
A blog post, a short story and... another short story in the works.
Posted by Wordcaster (Member # 9183) on :
Wrote first drafts of two new short stories. One for the trash; the other I started revising.
About 10k this week. Pretty solid by my standards.
Posted by Lissa (Member # 9206) on :
Yes I did! Slow but determined...
Lis
Posted by JenniferHicks (Member # 8201) on :
Yep. I finished the first draft of a short story and did some blogging and critiquing.
Posted by History (Member # 9213) on :
Some this week.
Revised and submitted a non-fiction flash (246 words). Polished the 1st 2000 words of a potential novella--hopefully I can keep it to a short story (this one with a golem for those who requested such a tale), Wrote the first 500 words of a short story and plotted it to completion.
I've held off on a final proof and polish of my completed novel. My excuse is my perception that: (1) it would benefit from my writing (and reading) more before returning to it, (2) my query letter would be stronger if I actually had sold some things I've written, and (3) perhaps writing a second novel about The Kabbalist would further make it better and of interest.
Or perhaps I'm avoiding rejection.
I've heard said that writers are often ego-driven, but my faith values humility--which is "another fine kosher pickle I've gotten myself into."
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
Hmmm, had to think about that.
I worked on three novels,with one of those I redid the first chapter: adding a couple of scenes, augmenting certain scenes, changing, deleting, adding sentences. But I realized Sunday that I completely forgot to describe a guy in the MC's life and more important I didn't describe my MC. Oops. But by the time I could get to my computer I forgot again. Sent out the chapter to be critted,,,oops again.
One deals with a new song I like, one deals with a choice I have to make dealing with my novel that will be ready in one to two months. One post had to deal with various items-including another reason why I wondered of Cook's latest Garrett novel was ghost written and the last was on my weekend out of town next week.
Of course I wrote various posts here and critted a story or two.
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
Finally wrote the little bridge between one scene and the next... actually I cheated, capped off the dialog in the one and made the next real short. But at least the blasted thing finally got written, after sitting there with a gap for... how many years now?? <smacks self>
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I had a pretty good week. Saturday, to my surprise, I started a new story, and since then I've doubled my usual daily output and written a thousand words a day---and, with maybe another thousand, maybe less, I'll finally have something short to submit.
Problem: It's based on, well, I'll say some artwork and characters in the artwork that I saw this past week---something about it set me off. Hardly the first time I've done that. I wind up reading a story, then writing, in effect, a sequel, often thousand of years away in time and lightyears away in space. But the original is central to the story---and belongs to someone else.
Solution: Unlike other times, I think I can get that out of the story. And none of the stuff I've come up with is implicit in the original---it's all something my feverish imagination added on. So I'll finish it, let it cool off for awhile while I work on other things...then revise it, remove the story-that-belongs-to-someone-else, and insert one of my own to replace it.
*****
I haven't abandoned revising the other story either. (See? I told you it was a good week for me.) In fact, I more-or-less reached the end of nitpicky revisions...my usual practice of eliminating "ly" adjectives and trying to make the verbs more immediate. Now I've got to come up with a few names, and do some research on aqualungs (to see whether something I put in the story is stupid or not.) I don't expect much trouble on that end.
I think I will send it out and around, after all. I'll print it out, package it up, stick stamps on it, and send it out in the traditional way. But that may be unfortunately delayed...my printer isn't working right! (More on this elsewhere.) I can't print out seventy-some pages of MS if they're going to come out blurry or with an odd defect in the print.
But that's a couple of weeks off yet...
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Addendum on Wednesday: I did finish the story mentioned above, just this morning. Fastest rough draft of a story to come out of me in at least five years.
Posted by Crank (Member # 7354) on :
Addendum: I finalized the cover art for a story I will be publishing via Smashwords later this month. Only two more covers to go!
S! S!
Posted by BenM (Member # 8329) on :
I had to do a double- and triple-take on that thread title because I thought it was one from last week... a year ago! Freakin' me out, man!
Another 9,000+ words on the wip this week so still making decent progress and the story's at about 32,000 words at the moment. I can tell there is going to be a lot of work to do on the revision - I watched an episode of Firefly last night and thought man, my dialog sucks! but at least it's all moving forward.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I'm still writing "2010" in my diary and on my checks...
Posted by Smiley (Member # 9379) on :
OMG, I thought I was the only one still doing that!
Posted by micmcd (Member # 7977) on :
1800 words FTW. Wrote a very powerful but uncomfortable scene that I had been avoiding for a long time. It hurt, but it came out pretty well.
Posted by Tiergan (Member # 7852) on :
for those who requested such a tale),
I thought I was the only one still doing that!