Bardic Circle

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Well for that censure against MC a writer, I think a certain "king of horror" used writers as main characters a few times to a very good effect

Yup. I know several writers who proscribe this, that, and the other, all of which are things King does on the regular. Yet these same writers also not only read Kind but recommend that other writers read him because his craft level is high and we can all learn from him!

Some editors will reject your story if the MC is a writer. It's true. Others don't care at all. And if you intend to self-publish, there are plenty of readers who won't care--and many who will welcome a character who is a writer, because a lot of readers are themselves writers, and we like to read stories about ourselves!

Respect proscriptions of a specific market/editor when submitting to that market/editor. But write what you want. Nobody has a monopoly on writing rules.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

My own writing has stalled.

I made it through my year of writing a short story a week. I didn't get the extra two stories to make it 54 stories in my 54th year. But I did write 52 stories, and I wrote weekly during a very stressful year. Then I let myself have a week's vacation to regroup. I want to get most of those stories that I wrote last year out on submission to professional markets. And I want to switch my new content creation focus back to novel-length WIPs this year. I was sort of taking a prep week for those things, and a catch-up week for some non-writing things that had been neglected. Then, one week after my 54th birthday, Donald Trump was inaugurated. And my stress level went through the roof.

Last year I was mostly stressed for myself and my dog Shelby. There were larger problems too, for sure. Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza. Russia's continued assault on Ukraine. Homelessness (which was my fear for myself and Shelby--but the problem is much larger than just the two of us). But world leaders were at least trying to make progress on those issues. And then Trump took office and in a single day undid most of the progress humanity has made in my lifetime with the stroke of a pen, and he's continued to be a wrecking ball for everything good every day since. I'm finding it next-to-impossible these days to concentrate on anything at all besides my terror not just for my own family but for the entire human species. We won't survive if we cannot find a way to stop him. And if we don't have the will to even try, maybe we don't deserve to.

Personally, I still would really like for our species to survive. I'd like for us to be worthy of surviving. So I've been speaking up. I've been speaking out. I refuse to be silenced. (Some fragile little Trumper butterflies have tried. They failed.) I campaigned for a month for a political candidate in my city who I know will be a strong voice against hatred and in favour of lifting everybody up. In a month's time, I may end up doing so again. (Provincial election here last month. Federal election coming up soon.) I've been trying, especially, to lift up Americans who are still fighting to be forces for good in our world. Because they're the ones on the front lines of that battle right now. They're the ones who need to do the heavy lifting to turn things around for all of us. And that is not easy. It's exhausting, sometimes terrifying work. It's hard to hold onto hope in the face of so much ugliness.

But we've done it before. We can do it again. The long course of human history demonstrates that things get better over time. We get better over time. We learn to love more, to cooperate more. We learn to better understand the interconnectedness of all life and therefore to move away from selfishness and towards caring, generosity, and cooperation. I still have hope that our current period of backsliding--as painful and severe as it is--will prove to be nothing more than a speed bump on humanity's greater journey of improvement, not the undoing of that journey.

So for seven weeks now my fiction writing has taken a backseat (a more accurate analogy would be: shoved out of the way completely into the trunk) to that larger battle. Some people have suggested to me: "Write for the joy of writing. Write to feed your own soul." And it's not bad advice. I feel exhausted by the battle sometimes too. I also need lifting up. But for me, forging community with others who are also in the trenches with me, and getting outside to enjoy nature, are both things that lift me up better than writing does. So when I'm not fighting in the trenches, that's mostly what I've been doing.

But I've not given up on writing completely. I do pick it up out of the trunk occasionally. One thing I've been meaning to share with you all here is that I've been participating this year in an online writing community called DreamCasters. DreamCasters is run by the publishers of DreamForge Magazine, an online and print magazine dedicated to publishing hopeful speculative fiction. DreamCasters is "a DreamForge discussion group devoted to helping our members improve their writing and storytelling through discussion and sharing expertise." Membership includes access to a private Discord server, monthly Zoom meetings, and some other perks. This month's meeting is this coming Sunday, March 9, at 1:00 PM Eastern Time (which will be Eastern Daylight Time, i.e.: UTC-4, by Sunday). The guest speaker for this month's meeting is James Wynn, an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, who will be speaking on the importance of considering space exploration and settlement from the perspective of colonialism. This feels to me like an especially pertinent topic given recent posturing coming out of the White House, and possibly of interest to others in our Bardic Circle. (Though the meetings are generally at unfavourable times for you, @TopNotch .) If any are interested in checking out the meeting, and the DreamCasters group in general, there is a form on this page you can use to request an invitation to attend the meeting for free as a guest.

This weekend's meeting topic is actually a central theme in my current novel-length WIP. Perhaps it will be the jump-start I need to get myself back into that project.

 

[Sólveig]

Well for that censure against MC a writer, I think a certain "king of horror" used writers as main characters a few times to a very good effect

Nearly 20 years before Stephen got crowned King, there was a dude in his late 30s/early 40s. He came to Paris from an American Miller, and used to sleep under the bridges before he penned his first novel, which was censored back in his old country. That didn't stop him from writing himself as a writer anyway.

 

[Sólveig]

My creative work is currently making a lot of attempts to get out of the Valley of Death. Honestly, having to use a separate keyboard on my laptop is annoying enough, especially when the T60 has an incredible keyboard, but with the E key not working it's really annoying. After using it a bit, this keyboard finally started to give some way, but now it's the weather that's killing me. Spring is about to start, and here in the Amazon coast means one thing: it's going to be hot. All this period between Carnivals and Easter is always hot, with no rain in sight. So yeah, I've been stalling.

As I mentioned in my log, I started writing a book quite out of the blue. Last year was really overwhelming, and it shifted my work from just titillation into a full-blown revolution. I couldn't escape transgressive literature, and not only is making me feel like I'm actually telling the world to stop for one second and just look around. Is not just about politics. It's about everything. Religion, politics, sports, the zeitgeist, the hedonism, the nihilism, the solitude, the excessive joy, the ignorance, the excessive knowledge, the absolute polarization, the division, the persecusion, the modern-day crusades... It's all about extremes nowdays, and no one realizes that we're harming ourselves more with our attempts to help than the amount of help we actually give. My worldview is shifting too. My outlook on life is shifting. Still being in love with someone, then realizing you also have a shot with someone else simultaneously, and after nearly killing myself a third time last year during an extreme crisis of paranoia does change everything.

I'm not sure if I've said it, but this thing I'm writing has been the most honest thing I've written thus far.

 

[TopNotch]

Both of you, @Laura Rainbow Dragon and @Sólveig have inspired me to write shorter pieces. Character backstories that woould never be included in a book but just for fun, to round out the characters for me, to firm up their motivations. I don't write spec fic like @Laura Rainbow Dragon and I don't write such heavy and soul-searching stuff like @Sólveig but I enjoy what I write and that's the important thing.

I also do a lot of reading on writing. So much is contradictory - it's quite funny. Do X - on NO account do X! I can't agree with Stephen King's form. I used to be a pantser but honestly, once I learnt how to plot (and that's still a work in progress) it makes everything so mcuh easier and I never block. He also never uses a notebook, reckoning that if he doesn't recall it when it comes time for him to write it, it wasn't very good. Now, not to take from his achievements, but I think advice like that from someone like him could really do more harm than good. He should stress that it doesn't work for him.

Okay, now that I've bashed a wildly successful author, I'd like to share something I read today because it was amusing. It's from a book on writing written in 1989. It's been interesting, some good points, mildly dated with reference to the sorts of books the author wrote but some nuggets. Anyway, he wrote this:
"Ideal action sequences are both exciting and informative; they spike the reader's pulse and keep the story moving, all at once. Like women's skirts, they should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting."
Ah, the good ol' last-century days!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Wow. That is an awful analogy, even by 1989 standards. (I can totally see it being published in '89. But it wasn't cool, even back then.)

I agree re: the writing advice. It can be helpful to read other people's methods for inspiration and consideration, but what works for one person isn't necessarily going to work for another.

 

[Sólveig]

Everyone has their own thing; it's true. I'm a plantser and a pantser myself; depending on the project. I tried plotting and I just spend more time plotting than actually writing. Again, I have nothing against plotters, and King's methods are his. Writing advice, like any other advice, it's just like a piece of clothing: you try it on, see if it fits, and if it doesn't, take it off and throw it, or you can adjust it to your needs. Writing 6 pages daily works for me, and it's even better if I reach to 10 pages daily, so 6 is my minimum, yet my bare minimum is always 1 to 2 pages, hence the stars. Some can't write daily, and that's perfectly fine too. There's no right or wrong thing about writing, there's only right and wrong thing about writing for you.

Still, taking from the ones before is how art gets made, and it's how culture is built too. I always try to read on my idols, not just their books, but the backstory of them and see what drove to write those pieces. The Prince was born during a crisis in Italy, and it was Machiavelli's way to make the wars less violent. I remember one edition that told how he was imprisoned and tortured, and that drove him to write that book. It was something like that. Don Quixote started out when Miguel de Cervantes was kidnapped by Turkish privateers and sold as a slave in Argel for five years. The stories from Delta of Venus came up during a time in which Anaïs Nin needed money urgently, and a porn collector commissioned her and other three authors to write erotica for him, paying them 1$ the page. Tropic of Cancer started because Henry Miller was a homeless man in Paris back in the 1930s, and he slept under different bridges and nearly begged his friends for food while trying to make it out as an artist. Treasure Island started because Robert Louis Stevenson was babysitting. Frankenstein showed up because Lord Byron challenged Mary and Percy Shelley to write a ghost story in a weekend... Usually there's something interesting that gives birth to a book, and I feel that learning the context is more valuable than just the dos and don'ts. Every writer is a different world.

I don't consider my writing heavy or soul-searching though, especially since most of my techniques are from the pulp fiction era, when writing low quality stories really fast for them to be printed in magazines to be sold for a dime was a good way to keep the lights on. Still, many of that stuff was transgressive enough to be considered obscene, so I'm on that lineage. I do write a lot because I can't have more than three days without writing, or else I start becoming prone to panic attacks. While it is true that I write erotica, as I mentioned in my log as well, I don't simply do porn, but also try to infuse bits of social commentary and satire within, like Marquis de Sade did, but I just try to make it more sellable instead, and the current erotica readers read erotica for the stimulus it brings.

"Ideal action sequences are both exciting and informative; they spike the reader's pulse and keep the story moving, all at once. Like women's skirts, they should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting."
Ah, the good ol' last-century days!

HA! I don't really take offense. I mean, in what I write, the shorter the skirt, the better it gets. I can see why it may ruffle some feathers though, but I just love the way the advice was written.

 

[TopNotch]

I think it is important and educational to read about the craft of writing. I'm not saying that you can't be a good writer without having done so, but an analogy I read/heard somewhere keeps coming back to me.
I've listened to a lot of music. I play (though not very well) a couple of instruments. I can read music. I know how to make the shapes so I am physically able to write music. The thing is, I don't know how to. I need to learn all those techniques that make music good, harmonious, emotive. Once I know that, the basics, I can play and create my own wonderful symphonic vision. Would anyone be surprised if I don't write an earth-shattering symphony or even a catchy ditty if I hadn't learnt the rules?
The same goes for writing. Once I know the basics - character development, pacing, structure, etc - I can break out on my own, shatter (if need be) those rules and move from Dick and Jane to Northanger Abbey (that's my favourite Austen, a lampooned gothic). But without learning the basics - and I mean beyond shaping letters and writing sentences - how can anyone (except the ridiculously serendipitous) write well?
Advice is variable - use a notebook/ don't use a notebook; write every day/ write when inspiration strikes; stop in the middle of flow/ write it all out - and it is interesting to read the various and varied techniques of successful authors, but that sort of advice is so intensely personal that I don't believe it could (or should) be offered up as any sort of stricture.
Tell me how to do something and I'll listen; tell me what to do, and not so much.

 

[cosmosfromchaos]

Hey everyone-
I'm new to this community and new-ish to Darebee. It seems like most here are prose people, but I hope there is space for a writer of terrible poetry I don't have a lot of spaces where I am to talk about writing, so I am pleasantly surprised to find one here!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Welcome @cosmosfromchaos !
Storytellers of all flavours are welcome here. What sorts of poetry do you write?

 

[TopNotch]

Welcome, @cosmosfromchaos I write terrible poetry too. That's why I stick to prose!

 

[TopNotch]

You know that feeling you get when you've spent three weeks working on an outline (okay, you probably don't if you're a discovery writer, but bear with me), and you've finally got it from go to whoa, and then you see how much more work there is to go, even though you're really excited about it and it's definitely going to be the best you've ever written? Yep. Got that feeling tonight.

 

[Saffity]

I read and consider contributing to this project and the only I write is terrible fanfiction... I don't think I've completed a single story that wasn't a one shot either.

I do enjoy reading what everyone's doing and learning more about the craft though. It helps me appreciate the book/fanfiction I do read.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

I read and consider contributing to this project and the only I write is terrible fanfiction... I don't think I've completed a single story that wasn't a one shot either.

I do enjoy reading what everyone's doing and learning more about the craft though. It helps me appreciate the book/fanfiction I do read.

Fan fiction is a great training ground for learning writing craft. It's also a perfectly legitimate form of writing in itself, provided one is doing it for personal enjoyment, not profit. (Except, of course, for the lucky folks who get hired to write media tie-in novels. They get paid to write fan fiction! But those contracts generally go to people who are already established writers.)

 

[Sólveig]

You know that feeling you get when you've spent three weeks working on an outline (okay, you probably don't if you're a discovery writer, but bear with me), and you've finally got it from go to whoa, and then you see how much more work there is to go, even though you're really excited about it and it's definitely going to be the best you've ever written? Yep. Got that feeling tonight.

Plantser here, and yes, that is actually what I went through with NaNoWriMo last year, though to be fair, it was my fault for trying to make it so restrained. I did not expect for it to become epic fantasy.

I read and consider contributing to this project and the only I write is terrible fanfiction... I don't think I've completed a single story that wasn't a one shot either.

I do enjoy reading what everyone's doing and learning more about the craft though. It helps me appreciate the book/fanfiction I do read.

One of my projects will be a fanfic of a public domain book. I like to think that my current book is a fanfic about myself. Helps to think that Henry Miller also wrote fanfics about himself.

Keep writing terrible. Quantity leads to quality. You have to make a lot of sh*t before you get to the diamonds. As for the sh*t you make... no worries, that's no waste, but instead is the fertilizer for your next fanfics.

Keep writing terrible one-shots. Short stories are always welcome, even if they are terrible fanfics!

Fan fiction is a great training ground for learning writing craft. It's also a perfectly legitimate form of writing in itself, provided one is doing it for personal enjoyment, not profit. (Except, of course, for the lucky folks who get hired to write media tie-in novels. They get paid to write fan fiction! But those contracts generally go to people who are already established writers.)

Laura, it is perfectly legal and fine to write fanfics from public domain works for profit. That's why we have so many Dracula and Sherlock Holmes incarnations now! Of course, it's better to be careful when making a new Dracula or Sherlock. These two are well known characters, so there's something to be expected out of them. YMMV, but that's just the artistical input now.

Narrator: She is still beating herself up that someone beat her on the idea of a Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper story.

 

[TopNotch]

@Saffity Writing is writing, regardless of what you write. It's the creative process that matters. And how much fun you're getting out of it all.

But this morning, after feeling so proud of what I had acomplished, I decided to add another action scene. And then perhaps a little tweak - but then that tweak was that damned butterfly again, and now I have to re-write most of acts two and three! Thank goodness I'm planning, that's all I can say. But (of course) I think this new tweak will make everything a lot tighter, and I'm even more excited about it.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Laura, it is perfectly legal and fine to write fanfics from public domain works for profit.

True.

That's why we have so many Dracula and Sherlock Holmes incarnations now!

And one still needs to be careful with these, precisely because they have already been fanficed. The original stories are in the public domain. But later works based on these characters are not. The media giants absolutely will go after you for copyright infringement if they think your work is derivative of their derivative, and not purely of the original work.

It's also important to note that works fall into the public domain at different times in different countries.

 

[Sólveig]

The media giants absolutely will go after you for copyright infringement if they think your work is derivative of their derivative, and not purely of the original work.

DISNEY!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

DISNEY!

Yup. Them.

 

[TopNotch]

Hmm, been quiet here for a while.
November's coming and although FicFan has taken over the whole NaNo thing - well, NewNoWritMo, as it's now called - I somehow can't associate with it anymore. The bloom is off the rose. So this year I'm doing NovNov (Novel November), hosted by ProWritingAid, which looks very similar to NaNo, even down to badges. So if anyone else is on that, I'll see you there.

 

[Sólveig]

@TopNotch I think people are overthinking it way too much. The organization had the same name for the challenge, yes, but that doesn't mean the challenge is done because of what the organization did and didn't do. NaNoWriMo was, for me, and it will always be, a challenge about writing 50K in the entire month of November. That's it. I don't care about the people behind it, I don't care about the drama, I don't give a DAMN about the whole aspect of it because it was never about the people. It's about YOU, the writer, doing 50K in 30 days. Focusing on the people behind it it's ludicrous, a waste of time, and if I'm being brutally honest here, the most stupid thing ever!

Jake Parker, the creator of Inktober, also had a fiasco a few years back. Does that mean Inktober is over? No, it's still going, and it's going with or without him, no matter what. NaNoWriMo can go on without changing its name. Seriously, it's stupid!

Still, the organization might be done, but the original creator of the challenge is aware of the mistakes done by the organization, and pretty much started over. I'm in here for the resources, really, and it's good to have it back with a leadership focused on not making the same mistakes as the previous organization ever did. Still, I've gone alone since 2017, and I'll always go alone in NaNo, because it was never about the organization to me. It was always about the challenge.

 

[astro_lizard]

I'll be attempting a personal NaNo challenge this year for the first time since... 2017? I think? Maybe even earlier than that. I've seriously missed writing. I don't think I'll be joining any of the new platforms, I'll just be doing it on my own. Though I do have to say that NovNov is an adorable name. Good luck and happy writing to everyone who is doing a writing challenge this coming November.

 

[TopNotch]

@Sólveig You misapprehend me. I think the whole idea of 50K in 30 days is great, which is why I'm doing it again. It's just that I cannot, in my own mind, divorce the child abuse accusations from NaNo, and I simply cannot associate myself with that anymore (personal reasons). If that's stupid, so be it. I do me, and that generally works.
The way you've done NaNo (and I have absolutely no criticism about it) doesn't put you up close and personal with the organisation so I totally understand your stance here. For me, though, I was a little more involved, and I guess I feel let down, a little disappointed.
That said, yes, there are other groups that stage 50K in 30 day challenges and I am very pleased about that, and I'm rather excited to get into stuff. I'm a plotter so I've been writing up my scene cards in preparation for next month.
Besides, as @astro_lizard so rightly pointed out, NovNov is just cute.
I wish you both (and anyone else) a successful November challenge, whatever you want to call it.

 

[astro_lizard]

Started writing right when the clock struck midnight Nov 1 and made it to around 1700 words. I didn't do as much planning as I meant to so I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants for this one. It's an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a long time so I have a vague-ish idea of where I want things to go. History tells me that my characters will likely have other ideas and I'll end up with something completely different than what I'm picturing now

 

[TopNotch]

Started writing right when the clock struck midnight Nov 1

Better than me! I finally convinced myself to start around 11:30 in the morning. I'm not sure today will be any different but what works, works.

 

[Sólveig]

I also started at the struck of midnight and got to 1200 something. I finished for today. 90 minutes of work in total, 4273 words. I'm doing bursts of 10 minutes, and I did better than last year by around 1000 words, according to my spreadsheet.

 

[TopNotch]

I also started at the struck of midnight and got to 1200 something. I finished for today. 90 minutes of work in total, 4273 words. I'm doing bursts of 10 minutes, and I did better than last year by around 1000 words, according to my spreadsheet.

That's an impressive amount for such a short period of time!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Best wishes to everyone doing a writing challenge this month!

The gang over at the HWC forums has been doing our own monthly writing challenges since October of last year, and I'm jumping in again this month after having been away from writing for most of the year.

Stress over the state of the world shut my writing down back in January, and I shifted my focus to other things. But it's time to get back to the words! (The stress is still there. But I cannot allow it to keep me from my writing any longer.) My goal for this month is not word-count or even project focused. It's simply to get back into the writing habit. To this end, my November writing goal is:

Maintain BICHOK, working on my writing for:

• one hour/day, five days/week for week #1
• two hours/day, five days/week for week #2
• three hours/day, five days/week for week #3
• four hours/day, five days/week for week #4

That's it. I'll be writing to some prompts from an HWC course to begin with, to ensure I have something to write each day I sit down to the task and am not just staring at a blank screen. I'll keep this up unless and until something grabs my attention that I wish to develop further.

 

[astro_lizard]

I've fallen a bit behind because I got randomly much busier than I anticipated, but as soon as I can sit down to write I'll be able to catch up. I've been able to think about pretty much nothing except for my story.

 

[TopNotch]

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

The resistance to getting back to my writing was strong. As a result, a lot of procrastination happened this day. But I eventually got 'er done.

Day 1 of 5 at 1 hour/day for week #1 is in the bag!

 

[Sólveig]

Yesterday I managed to reach 20% of NaNo. I'll work on it later tonight. It's been a bit of busy days. Also, finished the first third of the Monomyth, and I'll start the second third today, which is also the longest.

 

[astro_lizard]

I've planned my day so that I'll be spending around 7 hrs at the library tomorrow. Tomorrow is my Serious Catch Up Day! I'm still at just under 2k words, need to get cranking!

 

[astro_lizard]

Well, only around two hours of library time ended up happening. I think this weekend I may try again but at a different library for another change in scenery. There are qutie a few really cute and small ones within 40ish minutes of me and I've been meaning to visit them more often. I love love love love love love libraries.

Story is progressing nicely. There is a lot 'written' in my head that needs to come out. A few more writing sprints and I should be caught up and back on track. Hoping to do that tonight since it seems my insomnia is winning tonight.

Moving forward I'm going to try to write extra on the weekends so that I don't fall as far behind during the busy weekdays.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

I completed my week of writing 5 days at 1 hour per day!

Today the goal ups to 2 hours per day.

 

[astro_lizard]

Still a little behind and the story has gotten away from me. Not in a bad way, I just have no idea where it's going to go whenever I sit down to write. I'm enjoying building the habit of writing again so I'm not really worried about it. After November I'll worry about editing and making sense of it all.

 

[Syrius]

Lol, I just found this today. I am also NaNo-ing. I do miss the old website just for the word crawls, which are what get me through. Luckily, I saved a few of them on my computer last year. I am a pantser, through and through. I start with an idea and it just goes from there. I don't even know what my MCs look like until I start writing about them.

How's my NaNo going this year? I am at 38,422 words (I haven't written yet today) and I think I'm obsessed with my story. I know it's going to need some super editing later, because I have had many moments where I was repetitive, but it's NaNo. My main villain has only just been mentioned for the first time yesterday, which is really cool to me. Usually by now, I'm reaching the peak of the story. But no, my second MC is currently MIA, my first MC is being interrogated by the mini boss and doing great job of manipulating the truth to stay on board the star ship, and the first MC doesn't even know the second MC is missing yet (shh, the mini boss has him somewhere I don't know where yet).

I think my new goal for the month is to just write as much as I can. M is once again trying to convince me to publish. I told him that I need to learn to edit before that can happen.

 

[Sólveig]

@Syrius That's quite fast! I haven't written today either, but I'm at 35K at this point, and almost finishing Stage 7 - Meeting with the Goddess out of 17 Stages on the Hero's Journey. I'm working with a very small cast of characters though; just two, with the rest being composite characters (like an entire faction rather than one specific character) or very minor extras. What I didn't expect until I started the Road of Tryals is that the second main character was supposed to be a simple mentor figure; the one that shows up in Stage 3 (Supernatural Aid), but as I went through the very first trial I realized the mentor is also a Hero going on her own journey as well, one that is parallel to the narrator.

 

[Syrius]

@Syrius That's quite fast!

Yeah, I just looked at my tracker spreadsheet and I'm averaging 2,134 words a day. This is way faster than any other story I have written ever. Except maybe last year, but I no longer have the stats to refer to. I did have one rough section earlier on, but I somehow exercised my way through. It was very strange experience, but I'm just going with it.

Your progress is fast too! I love that your mentor evolved on you.

 

[astro_lizard]

A character that I workshopped over a decade ago but never made their way into a story decided to pop in to my NaNo story just now. They fit perfectly, like they were made to be there. Hm. Odd things are afoot over here, but I'm loving it. I haven't thought of that character in a long time. I always meant to write a story with them as the MC but never got around to it. Now they'll be a secondary MC in this story.

I'm still behind, but chugging along. I may not make the 50k goal, but I'll get close-ish.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

I completed my week of writing 5 days at 2 hours per day and am now onto 3 hours per day!
I am having fun!

 

[TopNotch]

I am having fun!

What's the point in doing it if at some level it's not fun?

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

What's the point in doing it if at some level it's not fun?

Well... there is a significant likelihood that I will end up destitute in my old age if I'm not able to at least start making some money from my writing soon. Trouble is, knowing this puts a crippling amount of pressure on the writing. Which resulted in my not doing it at all for nine months. Which of course guarantees failure.

2025 has been a truly horrific year for my finances. And my provincial government is now trying to push through legislation that strips important protections away from tenants and gives even more power to landlords (in an environment which is already wildly tilted in favour of landlords). If they do enact this legislation (which they absolutely can do if they want to--they have a majority, so no one can stop them) it will significantly increase the likelihood that I could end up homeless. In a country in which homelessness frequently results in loss of limbs due to frost bite and, well, death.

So, for me at least, there's a pretty huge point to doing it. The having fun part isn't what makes it worthwhile. It's what makes it possible.

 

[Sólveig]

41K yesterday, I haven't written today as of yet. I think I'll finish the second part of the Monomyth by the 50K mark, and the last 10K will be the third part, which is from Refusal to Return to Freedom to Live.

The draft is getting rougher, I am getting tired, and I couldn't believe that I rushed through the Atonement with the Abyss stage, but it's still not done. Man, rewriting is going to take a long effort, but I'm so looking forward to it.

 

[TopNotch]

Even so, @Laura Rainbow Dragon if you're not enjoying writing it, what makes you think that people will enjoy reading it?
Mind you, I'm incredibly impressed to know that you can earn useful money from your writing. Well done, you!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Even so, @Laura Rainbow Dragon if you're not enjoying writing it, what makes you think that people will enjoy reading it?

There's no connection here. The people who manufactured the clothing I wear and harvested the produce I eat likely didn't enjoy manufacturing that clothing or harvesting that produce. That doesn't affect my enjoyment of wearing the clothing or eating the produce.

Mind you, I'm incredibly impressed to know that you can earn useful money from your writing. Well done, you!

Lots of markets these days pay 8¢ US per word. At the current exchange rate, if I could sell one 3000-word short story per month, that would cover my entire food costs.

I'm not doing this now. Not even close. But it's not an unreasonable goal to work towards.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

These 3 hours per day days are tough to fit in. As a result, I took the first two days of this week off. Which I had not wanted to do. And I had time to write on both of those days. Just not for a full three hours. Now, all three days that I have written this week thus far, I have had to stay up later than I would have liked to get it done. So I'm going to adjust my rules somewhat going forward.

I'm still sticking to my 15 hours/week goal for this week and 20 hours for next week. (I don't know if 20 hours/week is sustainable long-term. But I'm going to try for it next week to see how that goes.) And I'm not going to allow myself to take the front end of the week off and then cram everything into the final day. (Ooph!) But I am going to allow myself to work ahead. Meaning:

I must have completed a minimum of 16 hours of writing work by the end of the 6th day of the week.
I must have completed a minimum of 12 hours of writing work by the end of the 5th day of the week.
I must have completed a minimum of 8 hours of writing work by the end of the 4th day of the week.
I must have completed a minimum of 4 hours of writing work by the end of the 3rd day of the week.

So I can still take the first two days of the week completely off, and then write 4 hours per day for the last five days.
Or write 4 hours per day for the first five days and then take the last two days off.
But I will also allow myself to write 3 hours per day for six days and then 2 hours on the final day.
Or 5 hours one day, then 3 the next.
Etc.

So long as I remain on or ahead of a schedule that would enable me to complete 20 hours of writing in the week while writing no more than 4 hours per day for each of the remaining days in the week, it's all good.

Let's see how this goes.

 

[TopNotch]

I read an article today about James Patterson (who definitely does not run a novel factory!). He's published 21 books so far - this year! So that's about one book, from go to whoa, every fortnight. Even if he pantsed the whole thing and didn't need to do more than one draft to get it in a publishable form, he'd be writing about 6000 words a day. Every single day. For the entire year. I think it's safe to assume that a lot of other people are doing the lion's share of the work.
Sure, he's stinking rich (about $800 million *sigh*) and he's made his name as the most prolific writer, but is he really? I wonder how many words he actually writes.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Sure, he's stinking rich (about $800 million *sigh*) and he's made his name as the most prolific writer, but is he really? I wonder how many words he actually writes.

Very few.

Patterson creates the outlines. Other people write the books. Then Patterson polishes what they've written.

 

[TopNotch]

That makes him more of an editor than a writer in my opinion. Or a supervisor. I've had bosses who tell me what they want and then adapt (if necessary) what I produced. But it hadn't been their product.

I wonder though, if I could write 6000 words a day for a fortnight. They would have to be typed straight on the computer because no way would my hand co-operate on that. And I'd have to have quite a detailed plan so I didn't waste time staring at the wall. And all my research would have to have been already done. That would take at least four days, leaving me only 10 days of the fortnight, which would mean boosting output to around 8.5k... Huh, don't think so. Make it three weeks, though (including all that prep), and maybe you're talking.