Happy Halloween, Did you write? 10-31-11

Happy Halloween, Did you write? 10-31-11

Boooo!!!

It is that frightening time, where you suddenly find that a whole week has gone by and all those monsters, dwarves, aliens, exotic creatures and space ships, strange people, are still haunting you, begging to come alive on paper. Leaving the un-dead within you is a horrible thing. Get them out of you and onto paper.

The purpose of this note is to remind you that next week, you need to write something. It is best to post here, even if you don't write, and just tell a little about what is going on in your life so you have to come up with excuses for not writing. After a while, the excuses will not sound good enough and you will find a way to write just so you don't have to come up with an excuse.
Repeated writing each week develops the habit of writing (not all habits are bad) and eventually something actually might end up being finished, which is a good thing.

As to what is writing, we all agree that all new writing is writing. Editing is also writing since many of us write by editing, and it counts even if it is someone else's work. Critiquing also counts as writing as it is a form of editing.
Poetry, technical writing, writing assignments, blogging, article writing, worked and character creation, are all writing. E-mails and board posts can also be counted as writing if they are very wordy AND pertain to writing or story. In essence, if you have to ask if it is writing, our answer is yes.

As for me, I did write.
I have worked on my SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE story all week long. I am in the process of solving some questions a first reader brought up. I started the week about three pages from the end and am still at that point. I only added 183 words this week. it does not sound like much but I added two scenes and removed one, and did a lot of editing in between.
The scene I removed was new. It was an action scene and after some work, I sent it to my last reader to see how it worked. It missed my target entirely. Her comments and clues had nothing to do with what I was after so I knew I failed. After a lot of thought, I ended up removing the scene and will fix the previous scene to do what I need done for that section of activities.

On the story idea front, I did fairly well for the month. With the story idea I post tonight, I did 31 story ideas for the month, which comes out to 32 pages, and 19109 total words of pure drivel.
I was actually surprised at the page count as I had several three page story ideas, but I see I had more than enough half and one page story ideas to make up for them.
I used to try to make the story ideas as full and detailed as possible, some being nearly complete stories. Once I got into some serious writing, I cut the word count down, just telling what the stories are about rather than actually telling the story, and I have posted them in batches rather than every single day, just so I can have more time to write my stories.

Last weekend, my brother and nephew melted some aluminum that they will use for future casting, and gave me a few pieces to play with.
This weekend, I took a large piece of it and using wood working tools, I made one piece of metal so I could mount it onto my little machine lathe. Once I did that, I mounted it onto the lathe and with the help of my nephew, I machined it into a nice clean disk.
Aluminum cuts sort of like a hard wood, but when my lathe was running at full speed, the hot aluminum stuck to the hot steel of my cutting tool so I had to stop and pry the aluminum off many times I later found that if I ran the lathe slower, it cut better, with less sticking.
Of course on the little lathe, it was really easy to work compared to steel. It was fun. I now see that if I can get my hands on some blocks of the metal, I can convert them into some tools I need in half the time that it would take to work steel.
I made the aluminum disk without any real plan, just working metal. I now know what I can make out of it and it will be an excellent tool for wood working.
Each year, I make Christmas ornaments. I sell a few but most end up as gifts. I try to come up with four new types of hand carved ornaments each year. A few years I came up short.
This weekend, I started making some ornaments I am out of and finishing some ornaments from blanks I did last year and ran out of time. I use various machines to remove excess material so I can spend my time actually carving and the result is a blank. I remove what excess wood remains and then add details.
While I have yet to come up with new ornaments for this year, by starting with the old ones, I am getting into the swing of making them. when the ideas come, I will be already in an ornament mind set.


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

YES, I DID WRITE!!!

DID YOU WRITE?