Did you write? July 26, 2010

Did you write? July 26, 2010

Step up to the confessional and tell me about your sins. The idea is to report whether you wrote or not, so that next time, you will be too embarrassed to report you did not write and actually open some work and do something.
How much you wrote does not matter. It is not uncommon while editing your work, for the word counts to go down, rather than up. If you write the right word, you have written.
What is writing is not in question. If you have to ask if it is writing, it is. New writing is writing, of course. Editing, is writing since I actually write by editing. I get something on paper, then edit it into something useable. Also, editing the work of others, including critiquing, is writing. World or character creation is writing. So is poetry, article writing, blogging, writing assignments are writing. E-mails can be writing if they are wordy and pertain to story or writing.

As for me, I have spent more time writing this week than I have in any week of my life, possibly month too. I am trying to take a thirty two thousand word piece and cut it down to fifteen thousand.
I see there is an advantage of cutting the words down on a work. sloppy sentences, which are always longer than needed, get cleaned up, get tighter. scenes that meander get straightened up. paragraphs of text get told better. The story tightens up.
I past that pint when I got the piece down to twenty two thousand words. I had removed the fat and cleaned up the sentences to the point where it really could not be cut well.
I am now slicing off scenes that really tell the story. As an example, I sliced off the entire opening scene to remove two thousand words. Oh that hurt. It explained so much about future stories. There are two more sets of scenes that will likely go the same way when I open the story again. This hurts as these are so good, excellent writing, excellent story.
I replaced that entire start with a couple quick comments. More scenes will fall the same way. Luckily, I have saved the files after each major change so I can recreate the best work should this become a novel rather than a short story.
I have shifted my time around and am spending several hours each night writing. along with some time during breaks at work. I got to spend almost all day Sunday writing because of car problems. that helped, but a decision I made this morning really advanced my writing project.

I am keeping up with my story ideas, but they are a shadow of what I used to post. I save time by telling what the story is about rather than showing it. Instead of three pages being the norm, one page story ideas is what I am writing. it takes sometimes only a half hour to write them now. that is more time for my other writing. I am also not getting on line to post them every single day. that allows for an extra hour or so of writing time since it really does not take that much more time to post two story ideas as it takes to post just one.

I have had clutch problems the past two weeks. I had a glorious failure on Friday. we towed it to my brother's house and I was dropped off at home. I was able to spend the rest of the afternoon writing.
Saturday we spent all Saturday working on the truck. we ran into a very minor problem and after two hours fighting with it, we ran out of time and energy. My brother said he could work on it again Tuesday.
Sunday I spent most all day working on my story, trying to cut it down.

To use the above as a story idea, consider how cars are cared for, some are running on their last legs, while others are maintained as pristine machines. there are trucks filled with equipment and debris that threatens, and sometimes does fall out, while others are polished to a shine.
Now there are those who imagine us with flying cars, going from city to city at three or four hundred miles an hour rather than sixty five. they picture the roads more as runways than a transportation system.
Now consider such a transportation system in use, and the maintenance of such air cars with the way ground cars are maintained. You will by nature, have air cars that should not be in the air, and air cars overloaded as people bring their finds or purchases home, people who really should not be flying, all buzzing above your house in all directions.
also consider space ships in a similar level of maintenance as our ground cars. You might have ships where the crew has to live in space suits as the hull won't hold an atmosphere. You will have crews who are creating spare parts out of the food machines to keep the thrusters running. you will have ships that cannot maneuver hard or the structure will fail. All of these are aiming at space stations and planets at high speeds.

As to the question of the week,
I can honestly say

YES I DID WRITE

DID YOU WRITE?