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Chipping away at a word count
Aug. 5th, 2008 09:53 amI've said here before that my writing took a nose dive. I've had trouble getting back in the step of things. Open a blank file, stare at it, go play 2 games of freecell. Come back to blank page, go play 4 games of freecell. I tell myself, you gotta write something, just let it be a piece of crap, at least it's writing. I don't do it. Which is strange because I'm a very disciplined person.
So I finally got serious and decided to do the Club 100 thing. I think there's a website, but basically it's just writing 100 words a day and keeping track. So I trudged out a new Excel sheet and set it up. I started Aug. 15, wrote 3 days and skipped 1. Wrote 2 days and then skipped 6. Started from Day 1 again and now I'm at 8 days straight of at least 100 words. And now my discipline is setting in because I don't want to break my "streak". (LOL, big EIGHT days for me is a streak!)
Trust me, the words are crap. Because most nights I wait until about 10 pm, farting around wasting time because I don't know what to write, and then I can't go to bed without my 100 words, so I just write a bunch of shit that I know will have to be cut out of the story, but hey, it's 100 words and then I can quit and go to bed. The problem is I'm trying to start a new story, and it's a SF story, which I do NOT write. I don't know the story, I don't know the technical details that should be somewhat factual, and as it turned out, I didn't even know the characters. But hey, I was writing and I was figuring out what *won't* work, and, as it turned out, I was working on the characters in the dimmest darkest section of my mind. Because last night the story came to me. I needed the character's motivation, I knew the plot conflict, but what was her personal story that resonates with the plot? And now I know it. I think the story will come out now. I'm having trouble finding the opening scene, but once I get that out of the way, (And goodness knows I have enough to choose from--about 3 so far) the rest of the story should flow. *Should* being the operative word there.
So this post is a testament to how just sitting down to write something, anything at all can work, cause it was only supposed to be 1 or 2 paragraphs!
On the yucky front, I don't feel well today. Not *bad*, but not good. Just yucky where you wanna go to bed and read all day. But I can't. But vacation's coming! We leave Thursday night for 9 days at the coast. And hopefully a lot of writing!
So I finally got serious and decided to do the Club 100 thing. I think there's a website, but basically it's just writing 100 words a day and keeping track. So I trudged out a new Excel sheet and set it up. I started Aug. 15, wrote 3 days and skipped 1. Wrote 2 days and then skipped 6. Started from Day 1 again and now I'm at 8 days straight of at least 100 words. And now my discipline is setting in because I don't want to break my "streak". (LOL, big EIGHT days for me is a streak!)
Trust me, the words are crap. Because most nights I wait until about 10 pm, farting around wasting time because I don't know what to write, and then I can't go to bed without my 100 words, so I just write a bunch of shit that I know will have to be cut out of the story, but hey, it's 100 words and then I can quit and go to bed. The problem is I'm trying to start a new story, and it's a SF story, which I do NOT write. I don't know the story, I don't know the technical details that should be somewhat factual, and as it turned out, I didn't even know the characters. But hey, I was writing and I was figuring out what *won't* work, and, as it turned out, I was working on the characters in the dimmest darkest section of my mind. Because last night the story came to me. I needed the character's motivation, I knew the plot conflict, but what was her personal story that resonates with the plot? And now I know it. I think the story will come out now. I'm having trouble finding the opening scene, but once I get that out of the way, (And goodness knows I have enough to choose from--about 3 so far) the rest of the story should flow. *Should* being the operative word there.
So this post is a testament to how just sitting down to write something, anything at all can work, cause it was only supposed to be 1 or 2 paragraphs!
On the yucky front, I don't feel well today. Not *bad*, but not good. Just yucky where you wanna go to bed and read all day. But I can't. But vacation's coming! We leave Thursday night for 9 days at the coast. And hopefully a lot of writing!
