11-21-11 Did You Write?

11-21-11 Did You Write?

It is that time of the week, where you suddenly realized the week was shorter than you planned. You look at your files containing your work in progress and wonder if you met your goals for the week. your goals could be several thousand words, or your goals could be opening just the work to have a look.
The idea of this note is to tell about what is going on in your life, and also about what is going on in your writing. The idea of writing about your life is to develop the habit of reporting in. When you don't have any writing to mention, hopefully the shame of not writing will set in and one will actually work to open the work during the next week.

How much writing is not important. What is writing is quite varied. All new writing is writing. Editing, even if it is on the work of others, is writing. Critiquing is a form of writing and counts. Blogging, writing assignments, technical writing, article writing, poetry, world and character development are writing. Bulletin board posts and E-mails can be writing if they are very wordy and pertain to writing or stories can be writing. Essentially, if you have to ask if it is writing, the answer is yes.

As for me, I am editing through my SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE story. I am not trying to add words, but improve what I have. The word count will likely inch up, but that is not my goal. I figure it is long enough.
I have made several passes on the first twenty odd pages, I am fixing and correcting the story this time, rather than rewriting it as I did before. each time I read through the piece, I find passages that could be said better. Hopefully, it is becoming a better story. There are scenes that need more added to them to make them complete. My middle fight scenes are really bad and need to be reworked. In those fights, my character is supposed to just rough up the thugs and they do something that really ticks her off and she loses it, killing them. That description is not what I have right now. I have her fighting to the death and they tick her off and she goes berserk and pummels them. I will correct the fight scenes when I get to them, even re-writing them completely if needed. Even without trying, I added 484 words this week.

On the story idea front. It looked like I was going to fall behind this weekend but somehow stayed caught up with the date.
My compost pile is down to 31 story ideas. This is essentially the top of the really old ideas. I would have had to dig into them tonight except I came up with one just a while ago. I had used up all the newer ideas this past week. I did come up with a couple, but not enough to keep from skimming the top.
Likely a good third of the compost pile ideas are good, but deserve more work to write than they would get as a story idea. Once written they are gone, done.

Outside of writing, Each year since 2003, I have made a set of four different ornaments every year. A few years I made more, and a couple years, I made less than the set of four.
Week before last, I started re-making some ornaments from previous years that needed to be made. Last week, I came up with my first two ideas for this year, palm trees and seals. I stopped at a store and saw a figurine of a polar bear and decided not to buy it as something to go by. a couple days later I decided I would make them. they would be easy to make. I then came up with my fourth ornament Saturday Morning as I was gong to work. I made one, including the paint, just to see how hard it would be and how it would look. My cornucopia ornaments is my favorite this year. I like the results and they are fun to carve.
Now all I have to do is to make a dozen of each ornament to have a complete set, and try to get them all done before the end of the month.... The worse part is that I've been thinking about what ornament to make since like June and had no ideas until now. It was the same for last year. I offer them for sale to friends at different places, and then gift a bunch to friends and family at Christmas. The money pays for tools and materials in my woodworking hobby, at least that is the intent.
I will make some of each imminently so I have some to show and then work at making the rest as time and demand dictates. I have a bunch of "blanks" from previous years that still have to be carved. One uses the band saw to remove the excess wood from the block to make the blank, and then carve the rest of it to the final shape and details.

As to the question of the week,

YES, I DID WRITE.

DID YOU WRITE?