Did You Write? April 26, 2010

Did You Write? April 26, 2010

Where did this week go? I thought I just posted this note yesterday! the month disappeared fairly fast too. I just remember a few highlights that happened this month.
Many among us write every day, thousands of words a week. Many among us are lucky to write thousands of words a year. This note is an attempt to help the second group. If you now this note is coming up, and you are honest enough to report, even if you do not write, then this note will be a prompt to get you to write, at least something, during the week.
Of course, life gets in the way. That is the kind of thing that should also be reported as to why you did not write. Knowing others did not write, does help the rest of us. But writing, even if it is a pittance, also helps.

What is writing, and how much writing that needs to be done to be said to write, really unimportant. I have never seen anybody say "That is not writing." It is more important if YOU think it was writing.
AS to what is suggested as writing, Any new writing is writing, of course. Editing is writing, even if it is someone else's or just critiquing someone's work. With editing, word count does not matter. It is not unusual for the word counts to go backwards as one zaps entire sections to make improvements.
Writing assignments, poetry, articles, blogging are writing. So is character or world creation. E-mails can also be writing, as long as they are wordy and pertain to story or writing. Other things might be writing, if you decide that is what they should be.

As for me, I did write. I wrote out my story idea version of an outline of my latest work in process. I was struggling with writing the story start to finish, some scenes fighting me.
I decided to follow my own suggestion and write out a "story idea" of the work in progress to see where it needed to be. that worked. I was less interested in the details I was getting bogged down on, and better able to see what had to happen.
I finally got to the end and fired it off to my writing partner to glance at. I got the suggestions back last night and when I open it up, I will make some of those changes to the outline before I sit down and actually write.
As it was, I had several writing sessions this week and I added two pages to the outline, bringing it to page 12, and added 1772 words to bring it up to 7270 words.
After my requested changes, I will return to my actual story, building in the changes I made in the outline, and then add the scenes I have designed for the rest of the story. Then the fun part is tightening things up.

On the story idea front, I keep falling behind, and then catching up. I tend to write short versions of my concepts when I do two in a sitting. On some other day, they likely could have been made a page or two more, but I would write something short, then see I have more time, so I write a second concept and it ends up being short.
At the beginning of the month, skipping a day is not a problem, not a worry. At the end of the month, being an idea behind becomes somewhat bothersome. I rush to keep up.
Other than a short period last week, I have been "on a tear" on coming up with new concepts. AS usual, they appear out of nowhere, little things seeding the concepts. Many days this week, I have come up with two story ideas in a day.
Typically, I will take one of the top story ideas to write, or go down just slightly, to get one I know I want to write, or know it needs to get written so it does not sink too deep. Taking ideas near the top is why this is a compost pile. The longer it sits, the deeper it goes.
Including the story idea I am writing tonight, I have 56 concepts on my compost pile. Most of the top ten are excellent, half the next ten are good. It goes downhill from there. There are some gems deep down in the stack, but they need special conditions to write them.

I am trying to rebuild some old wood working projects. These were my early works that I did not understand exactly what I was doing or how to do it. These do not have good design, have some serious problems in how they were made, and are not really worth anything as they are. some were presentable. While they might not be worth anything after I am done, I figure I will learn something in repairing them that might help other pieces, and they might be worth more than they are now. It is a fun challenge. So far this weekend, I destroyed one piece and may have saved a second one. I usually figure out what I should have done, after I did it wrong.
My system of making platters is helping me with fixing these old pieces. It would have been a whole lot easier if I could have found my double sided tape that has disappeared completely. I guess I will pick up another roll this weekend.
I used my platter system to sand and clean up a couple of the platters I made earlier. That tells me that I can save several pieces the same way.

As to the question of the day. I can honestly say

YES, I DID WRITE!!

DID YOU WRITE?