What’s that they are watching, ignoring the wind and the rain?
A note?
A map?
A photograph?
Category Archives: Writing
45.000 or bust!
… And so we decided to turn it into a race.
Yesterday my friend Claire, who is working on her novel, announced to the world at large1 that she plans to reach a word count of 45.000 by the end of the weekend.
Now, I’m writing too – yeah, I know I’ve told you about it to distraction – and I have a target of 45.000, too, to be reached… well, yesterday.
And so, I said, why not make it a game?
Competition, especially friendly competition, can be motivational, right?
Claire accepted – after pointing out that she’s a little ahead of me already.
I’m currently clocking at about 33.000 words (unedited).
This means, easy – 3000 words a day, for four days.
Will I make it? Probably.
More, I haveto make it, or my editor and my publisher will flog me in public.
Will I make it before Claire? Ah, that’s the point of this whole racing thing, right?2
So, now lunch, then we start writing as fast (and good) as possible.
I’ll keep you posted.
Related articles
Narrative buttressing
And so, I spent the weekend doodling instead of writing.
The day before I was really on a roll – on Friday I hammered out 6000 words in two sittings, and that’s quite a bit of work.
In the meantime I got the revision of the first half back from my content editor.
Now, a lot of what he pointed out was already on my list, so I took it in stride – but he made a few other observations that were unexpected, and pointed out a number of problems.
And they are not word-problems – they are structural problems.
Or at least, they are problems whose solutions I think must be structural, not narrative1. Continue reading
Writing Prompt – Bad Dreams
Lawrence Sterne Stevens Cover art for Fantastic Novels, July 1948
Now this should inspire some nicely weird stories…
Writing is good for the soul – so what?
Yesterday my friend Lucy did a post about the quality of genre fiction1 and the horrid effect that in our country the sudden invasion of rank amateurs is doing to the field.
There’s an awful lot of third grade rubbish being self-published, basically written by adolescents of all ages, people that are lacking in terms of writing skills and of genre culture. The sort of people that start working on their fantasy trilogy because they saw Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies and nothing else.
Clearly, there is a Darwinian selection at work, and rubbish will not survive, but right now it is cluttering the (virtual) shelves. A few benighted readers are actually liking this sort of stuff, but basically anyone deserves what they decide to read2.
Now, one of the things my friend Lucy was told was, writing is good for one’s soul.
Which is certainly true, but also, it is basically meaningless. Continue reading
Writing Prompt – Something Different… and Important
Some very different graphical inspiration for writing, today.
I’m linking here, and I recommend you all go and read, Lauren Panepinto’s great post on the Muddy Colors collective blog.
It’s called What Women Want… in Women Characters, and it features some wonderful art to go with a strong, intelligent take on women and fantasy.
Please, read it.
Thinking through the keyboard
The idea for this post comes from something I wrote yesterday on my other blog, the GreyWorld Project blog.
I quote myself…
I’ve got my story, I’ve got my characters, now it’s just a matter of writing the thing down – mechanics, more than creativity
But then I thought
but it’s not really like that – there is a connection between the mechanical act of writing, the fingers dancing (or plodding) on the keyboard and invention… hmmm, I’ll have to write a post about that
And this post is that post about that.
Let’s state the topic in a less confused way – there is a connection between the mechanical act of writing and the creative act of writing.
Or is there? Continue reading
Karavansara 