12-07-09 Did You Write?

12-07-09 Did You Write?

Have you written this week? Here is where you tell about your writing experience or make up some lie about why you did not write.
This note is a prompt to get many of us to write at least once, sometime during the week. You know the note is coming so you can prepare yourself to do some writing and then brag that you accomplished something.

As to what is writing, I should mention that you don't have to accomplish much. One sentence, one paragraph, one page, a chapter. No one is going to rag you about how little you wrote.
WE all accept that any new writing, is writing. Editing though, is also writing, even if it is someone else's work, or that there is no increase in word count. It is still writing. Poetry, article writing, blogging, world or character building, are all examples of writing. Even E-mails, as long as they are wordy and pertain to story or writing, is writing. No one is going to rag you about your definition of what is writing. If it is writing to you, go ahead and claim in.

As for me, I did do some writing this week.
I made two passes of editing on WAXY'S CLEAN FUN. Most of my waxy dragon stories are just slightly better than my story ideas in writing quality. When I finished this story earlier this year, I had sort of rushed through the end to get to the end. The beginning had several edit passes while I was writing it. I basically read through the piece the first time, changing sentences and words here and there. I finished the story and found it was not horrible at the end. The second edit was mainly at the end part of the story, paying a bit more attention to how it was written. In the editing, I added only 387 words, with it at the beginning of page 16 when I started, and near the end of page 16 when I finished. It was fun to read it over as I could not remember what all I did with it.
If that was all I did , I would proudly say I did write.
I decided to start on the second story in the Waxy dragon story. This starts where the birth story ended, and will go to where Waxy finds out where the "funny farm" is. This is an are where she meets strange characters and it is where a good number of stories take place, at least in part. My writing partner have not discussed what the place is like so this will be all new territory and may change drastically once it goes between us.
The funny farm is part of Atlantis, the one that supposedly fell into the sea. It is now some place else. The funny farm is where some of the repair people of the resort live and work, and where cartoon and comic characters also vacation or retire. That is why it is the funny farm.
Today I sat down and wrote about half an hour to forty five minutes, and have just barely on page 2, maybe two lines onto it, and have 676 words. Not bad for writing from they keyboard. How much of it will remain as it is, will be something else.

ON the story idea front, I am no doing too bad. The past week, I have a number of posts that were well below what the work deserved, or bad enough to fill a space. It has been hectic so I have taken short cuts on my posts.
My compost pile has some jewels, but some require some time to develop them and I have to be in the right mood to do them right. As it is, my compost pile has, including what I am posting tonight, 41 story ideas.
I am always surprised that I keep coming up with new concepts at a pace that matches my posts. Over the past year or so, my posts have been running somewhere near forty notes in the compost pile.
I am happy to report that I have been doing these story ideas for 12 years now. I do not know the exact number, but would not be surprised if I have not posted 5,000 story ideas to date. This has been fun to do for the most part. What is interesting, is that I have good doubt that I have ever repeated a story idea. I generally recognize if I have come up with a concept before. If you figure two pages each, that turns out to be a whole lot of drivel.

One characteristic I love in my story ideas is characters that have longevity, The old game player that has outlasted all others in the sport, the man with eternal life, the player that is good enough to be in the game but makes his records spread over many career lengths, The old expert who works slow and steady, which is why he is still there,
It is the old "experience and conniving is better than energy and imagination." type saying. O
One favorite is the old martial artist who is also a wood worker, who is trying not to be known for his skills. He is forced into showing what he can do by events.
Another favorite is like a god working on a project, such as making an effective interstellar space ship by himself.
The basic idea is that you have someone who has had time to really learn and perfect something, and has experienced life. They are there because they are good enough to do the job, or they have simply outlasted those better than themselves.

AS to the question of the day I can proudly say
YES, I DID WRITE

DID YOU WRITE?