Jan. 18, 2010 Did You Write?

Jan. 18, 2010 Did You Write?

Another week, another test of you resolutions. The question is, Have you written at any time this past week? If you have, you have met the minimum of what we ask for.
This note is a prompt to give you something to work for, to develop good habits in writing. The good habit I am interested in, is to write each and every week, even if it is a paragraph or even a sentence. We are not interested in volume. One should open a document and write something. the hope is that by the end of the year, writing will become second nature. A little bit of writing each week will add up to a lot of pages of work.

Of course, what we write, is not important. If you think it is writing, you have our permission to announce it. Even if you don't think it is writing, you may announce it.
No one will debate that NEW writing is writing. I am positive that no one will disagree about Editing being writing, especially since few of us can write perfectly the first time. Even editing someone else's work is writing. Along with editing, critiquing someone else's writing is writing. Plus, there is poetry, articles, blogging, world or character building, writing assignments, are all writing. Even E-mails can be writing if they are wordy and pertain to writing or stories. there are others that can be listed. If you want to say you wrote, whatever you did counts. No one is going to tell you it is not writing.

as for me, I did write, a little, about five hundred words. the last scene may well disappear. I just realized that on this second story, I really have no story, no plot, no real ideas for it. I wanted to show some stuff to set up other stories, but there nothing there. I will have to give it a thought, now that I see I have a problem. Until I work it out, I have other stories to work on, either to finish or to edit.

On the story idea front, I am doing all right. I am caught up with today's date. In my compost pile, including tonight's story idea, I have 38 notes. I went a week or two without coming up with anything new, and then, Ideas have been coming to me fairly quickly.
I do wish I had control over when and how I come up with the concepts. Having them come fairly regularly would make a big difference. there is always that worry that I will never come up with something. then there is that worry that all I will have to work with are concepts that deservedly sink to the bottom of the pile.

This weekend was the start of my tenth year of woodworking. On January 17th, 2000, It dawned on me that my dad was in his 80s. He had tried to get me into woodcarving before this but I was not interested. On that day, I decided I did not want one of those I wish I had said, I wish I had done" kind of thing with my dad. I borrowed one of his knives, took a piece of wood and carved the top half of a little man that I am still proud of. Taking up carving was an excellent decision as a hobby in my life.

I had one of those woodworking weekends where, if I were not in a good mood, it would have been thought of as a royal pain. I broke four to six pieces in the course of the day. What I did mostly was to go onto a different project. I have had days like that where it felt like nothing was going right. This was not one of those weekends, though.
the thing I am sad about, was I never finished some projects I was really hoping to get done.

To take that and turn it into a story idea,
Billy seams to be a happy person. He is working with a large manufacturing team. Each item they are making is custom, all hand work and sometimes delicate. The machines they are working with are much the same.
Billy walks in each day with a big smile on his face. He gets to work like the others. A piece he is working with gets out of balance and the piece is destroyed before he can turn the machine off. Others are cussing about their mistakes. he is all smiles and tells one of the guys a joke about dumb machines.
On another machine, he is working when there is a loud pop and the machine shuts down violently. Two others working with him on the machine scream out using language to make a sailor blush. Billy is almost laughing.
Through the whole project, this goes on. Billy is always in a good mood while others are getting more and more down as the project is falling farther behind.
Billy's mood keeps growing brighter as the deadline approaches.
It turns out that Billy is family with a competitor and actually has something to do with the company falling behind schedule. His happiness is from them not succeeding.

As to the question of the day,
I happily can say

YES, I DID WRITE.

DID YOU WRITE?