December fifth 2011, Did You Write?

December fifth 2011, Did You Write?

I bet some of you are just getting back into the swing of things after the Thanksgiving holiday, hoping to stay in it for just a couple weeks before Christmas and New year messes you up again.
This note is mainly for those who write maybe once every few months. This is an opportunity to shame yourself into writing By posting here whether you have written or not. After a few times of not writing, you will feel shame and start writing so you can feel good about accomplishing anything. For the rest of us, we can feel shame for not meeting some goal we aimed for, during the week.

How much to write is not important. It is more about first opening some work in progress or starting something new. The more you do the better but opening something is the most important part.
As to what is writing, It can be just about anything. New writing is of course writing. Editing, even if it is the work of others is also writing. Critiquing is a form of editing and therefore counts.
Poetry, technical writing, blogging, writing assignments, article writing, world and character creation, synopsis, outlining are all writing. Bulletin board writing and E-mails can be writing if they are wordy and pertain to writing or story.
Of course, many of these might not be looked at as writing. The rule is, though, if you have to ask if it is writing, the answer is yes.


As for me, Yes I have been writing. I got to THE END on my Spirit of Vengeance story on the clean up editing pass I did. I am now in the final stages of editing. I ran it through two grammar checks this weekend. I have two others, plus reading aloud.
With grammar checks, each author considers certain things a problem. They will flag those things as a problem. I used one ages ago that flagged FROM and asked if I really wanted FORM. It was something the author felt was important.
There are standard problems they flag that we all would agree with. Then they have flags that basically say "there is a problem with this sentence but I have no idea what it is."
Grammar checks are also not designed for fiction. Conversation throws them into a tizzy. "foreign" names also bother them a lot. The help files and instructions are written by people who know language in detail, for people who do not need a grammar check.
The key to using a grammar check is to learn what to ignore and what to pay attention to.
I used two of my programs and they did help. I did get a kick that they disagreed with the spelling of one word, though.

On the story idea front, I have 40 story ideas, including the one I am posting tonight, in my compost pile., It would have been a worse except that I came up with four new story ideas today. I was getting down to the top of the permanent compost pile. I cannot remember if I mentioned it and won't bother checking, but I did one story idea at the end of last month that was supposed to be two. It dawned on me that the first one was simply a description of a disaster. The second one was the aftermath. I combined the two. I have one other double story idea in the stack.
Last month, I posted 30 story ideas for a 30 day month and it ended up on Page 35 with 21229 words of pure drivel. One never knows when one might spark one's imagination I happened with my Spirit of Vengeance story. It was originally a story idea. It looks little like the original idea but that is not important. If twenty people wrote stories from that same story idea, we would have twenty different stories when they went to market. It is why I have no problems using ones I have already posted.
I started posting these story ideas in December 1997. I need to locate about two year's worth of files in my backup disks to be able to work out exactly how many stories I have posted. at an idea a day, It is a lot of ideas and I doubt I have repeated one.

I brought my Christmas ornaments to work today. I have at least six of each kind of ornament. I really need twelve of each but I have enough to start.
I got an idea for a bowl that would be a turkey. I was going to have the tail integral to the bowl and add the carved head. While trying to work out the process, I decided I should try it small, a Christmas ornament, to see if my concepts would even work.
My first attempt showed me I did not fully given thought to the shape of the body. I had it backwards. After some thought, I decided to carve it by hand. When I was done, I showed the unpainted carving to my mom who tried to set it on the tail and have me add a tail to the belly. Oops. I did some touch-ups and then painted it. Once painted she saw what I was doing with it. Now I am considering making a bunch of them as Christmas ornaments using corrections I learned on the first one.

I heard on the radio that they are going to take some genetics found in a mastodon bone and clone it into an African elephant The host asked if we have not learned from Jurassic park yet.
Consider if we somehow got dinosaurs to come alive and start breeding them. Since one line of research says they are related to birds, and birds essentially taste like chicken, think of raising dinosaurs for food. Harvesting the eggs, The babies sold as big chickens. The adults processed for slabs of chicken or mass produced chicken products. think of how many chicken nuggets an adult dinosaur would provide.
My original thought was for something like Velociraptor or T-rex but herbivores would be better as what would you use to feed a predator? There are always dietary concerns when eating a predator.


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

YES I DID WRITE!!!

DID YOU WRITE???