This is the second time that I'm giving this "timed-write" thing a go. I won't bother linking to my first attempt, since that would be a waste of time. This is probably good practice for tomorrow, when I want to have my students do "writing sprints" for their novels. The idea behind that, which I took from NaNoWriMo is to have a mini competition to write as many words as possible in 15 minutes, post the quantity, and then do it again. You repeat that for about an hour--we'll do 45 minutes in my class--and see how many words you can get. It's interesting, because it really helps you to focus on what you're doing at that very moment, but it's also something that can boost your word count by a lot.
When I went on my writing retreat with my writing group friends (which was different than when I went by myself), I suggested giving this a try, but we never got around to it. Heh. When we went as a group, I accidentally left the keys behind. I had to drop the friends off at the cabin with my brother, who got them all settled (done because we happened to make it through the gate without any problems on the way up), and then drove back to Spanish Fork to meet my mom who dropped of a spare set of keys. When I got back, I sat down to start my work--editing a book--and promptly fell asleep. Even my own writing puts me to sleep.
In fact, it's my own writing that I wanted to think about aloud here. Going against the setup of writing that I discussed yesterday, I am picking things as they occur to me. This gives the essay a much more spontaneous feeling, but I'm pretty sure that spontaneous, in this case, simply means "random and incoherent." Anyway, since I'm lacking structure, it's kind of nice to spitball and see what sticks.
I should have written this essay (or anything else) hours ago, but I decided against it because I wanted to play video games. Even though I've finished Final Fantasy XV, I still want to accomplish other parts of the game. So I played that instead of sitting down at the keyboard. Writing after I've done a day at school--even an easy one, like today was (professional development day)--can be mentally draining. I knew that if I sat down, butt-in-chair-and-fingers-on-keyboard, I would probably fall asleep at my desk.
I played video games instead of napping.
The game was unremarkable--just hunting monsters and stuff. Y'know. As you do. But after dinner, I sat down with WikiDpad. It's a piece of software that allows you to create a locally-stored database of whatever you want. In my case, I use it to keep my fictitious worlds straight. Magic systems, nations, histories--whatever it is that I'm working on, I try to store it in WikiDpad. I haven't gotten to the point that I can use it consistently. Often, as I'm writing, I try to dig into what I've designed in the world before, only to have a large gap in it. Like, I sometimes leave out important details, figuring I'll get back to them later, only I never do. Then I have to try to plug into the world well enough to get a sense of what I was thinking. It's not really the best thing that I could do for my writing, but it's something at least.
Anyway, I began generating a ward list for the Mormon-fic I'm writing. (I can't think of a better title for it--I'm calling it The Town in my head, which is terribly blase.) This town is small, so putting it all together the way that I am--piece by piece, short story by short story, almost--is enjoyable. I started with the first character I wrote about, Bishop Carsen. I read through what I'd written, trying to pull out as many details about these characters as I had alluded to in the story itself. Then I began putting in who was a member of the ward (which, if you aren't LDS and don't speak LDSese, the ward is the geographical section of a city or town that is under the ministry of the lay bishop; they tend to be about 400-500 people per ward, though that number can vary), as well as any non-members. Since I'm trying this story out in a very different way than I've been prone to writing in the past, this distinction of who is and who isn't a member is important.
I think.
See, I don't really know what this story is about. I know that the town connects all of these people, but I don't know that the town is really a character. What I do know, is I usually focus on the world I'm building, then let my story be about the characters who inhabit the larger world. This time, however, the entire world is built upon the people. It's the characters that matter. The location is significant because of the tone I want to strike, but it isn't really the most important aspect. Keeping the characters straight is my primary concern here, since I don't have to worry about magic systems or politics or maps.* This new focus is where my writing is predominantly happening, which is strange.
Now, I write characters. I like to think that most of my characters are interesting, go through growth and challenges, and generally make it seem as though they're worth spending time with. Especially in fantasy and science fiction, where a lot of the attention of the storytelling is on the world and/or magic systems, I think it's really important to spend time on characters. But I like to see my characters--these births of my imagination--interact with the imaginary world. As a result, I tend to let a lot of the character stuff be organic within the story, rather than built into WikiDpad.
Not so with The Town (still think that's a dumb name). This one I'm approaching differently. I only end up writing a chapter in it every couple of weeks, which is also different than my other stuff. In the past, I've written one thing--focused on just the one project--and pushed it until completion. This time, I'm allowing myself to work in a couple of arenas.
Which reminds me: I have to work on one of my edited pieces. I just don't think it's quite ready for submission, but I've been far too lazy about sending out to agents. The laziness is "justified" because I don't want to edit the piece again, but I want to try to sell my book. This has put me in a position of having to do my least favorite thing about writing: Revising. I hate that--it's like listening to yourself on a recording, but for hours upon hours. I know it's necessary, and I'm sure I'll have a better story when I'm done, but I won't be happy while I do it. In fact, I know I've talked about that before on this blog. Had I the time, I would link it. But I don't.
So there.
Word count: 1,464
----
* Actually, I really want to draw a map and figure out where everyone lives in this town of Noah. The problem is, most maps of rural Utah towns are pretty boring: There's a main street, and then nice grids overlaying it, like a waffle iron was pressed on a paper and they used that as their basis. There's nothing wrong with that set up--it makes a lot of sense and uses a familiar system--but it's not like the map I made with Ash and Fire. In that book, I took a map of the City of London (not London, the city) and rotated it around. I then traced a bunch of the thoroughfares and streets, modifying it a little with Photoshop until I got the map to look the way I wanted to. Then I went through and added street name after street name, using my own arbitrary rules for what was a road or a street and how the different gates of the city mattered and were named. I ended up having so much fun making the map, I ended up writing the story only so that the map would have a purpose. Orson Scott Card talks about a similar experience he had in his How to Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy book (I think that's its title). While I don't really like a lot of Card's stuff, it's cool to think that a New York Times bestseller and I share some creative habits.
When I went on my writing retreat with my writing group friends (which was different than when I went by myself), I suggested giving this a try, but we never got around to it. Heh. When we went as a group, I accidentally left the keys behind. I had to drop the friends off at the cabin with my brother, who got them all settled (done because we happened to make it through the gate without any problems on the way up), and then drove back to Spanish Fork to meet my mom who dropped of a spare set of keys. When I got back, I sat down to start my work--editing a book--and promptly fell asleep. Even my own writing puts me to sleep.
In fact, it's my own writing that I wanted to think about aloud here. Going against the setup of writing that I discussed yesterday, I am picking things as they occur to me. This gives the essay a much more spontaneous feeling, but I'm pretty sure that spontaneous, in this case, simply means "random and incoherent." Anyway, since I'm lacking structure, it's kind of nice to spitball and see what sticks.
I should have written this essay (or anything else) hours ago, but I decided against it because I wanted to play video games. Even though I've finished Final Fantasy XV, I still want to accomplish other parts of the game. So I played that instead of sitting down at the keyboard. Writing after I've done a day at school--even an easy one, like today was (professional development day)--can be mentally draining. I knew that if I sat down, butt-in-chair-and-fingers-on-keyboard, I would probably fall asleep at my desk.
I played video games instead of napping.
The game was unremarkable--just hunting monsters and stuff. Y'know. As you do. But after dinner, I sat down with WikiDpad. It's a piece of software that allows you to create a locally-stored database of whatever you want. In my case, I use it to keep my fictitious worlds straight. Magic systems, nations, histories--whatever it is that I'm working on, I try to store it in WikiDpad. I haven't gotten to the point that I can use it consistently. Often, as I'm writing, I try to dig into what I've designed in the world before, only to have a large gap in it. Like, I sometimes leave out important details, figuring I'll get back to them later, only I never do. Then I have to try to plug into the world well enough to get a sense of what I was thinking. It's not really the best thing that I could do for my writing, but it's something at least.
Anyway, I began generating a ward list for the Mormon-fic I'm writing. (I can't think of a better title for it--I'm calling it The Town in my head, which is terribly blase.) This town is small, so putting it all together the way that I am--piece by piece, short story by short story, almost--is enjoyable. I started with the first character I wrote about, Bishop Carsen. I read through what I'd written, trying to pull out as many details about these characters as I had alluded to in the story itself. Then I began putting in who was a member of the ward (which, if you aren't LDS and don't speak LDSese, the ward is the geographical section of a city or town that is under the ministry of the lay bishop; they tend to be about 400-500 people per ward, though that number can vary), as well as any non-members. Since I'm trying this story out in a very different way than I've been prone to writing in the past, this distinction of who is and who isn't a member is important.
I think.
See, I don't really know what this story is about. I know that the town connects all of these people, but I don't know that the town is really a character. What I do know, is I usually focus on the world I'm building, then let my story be about the characters who inhabit the larger world. This time, however, the entire world is built upon the people. It's the characters that matter. The location is significant because of the tone I want to strike, but it isn't really the most important aspect. Keeping the characters straight is my primary concern here, since I don't have to worry about magic systems or politics or maps.* This new focus is where my writing is predominantly happening, which is strange.
Now, I write characters. I like to think that most of my characters are interesting, go through growth and challenges, and generally make it seem as though they're worth spending time with. Especially in fantasy and science fiction, where a lot of the attention of the storytelling is on the world and/or magic systems, I think it's really important to spend time on characters. But I like to see my characters--these births of my imagination--interact with the imaginary world. As a result, I tend to let a lot of the character stuff be organic within the story, rather than built into WikiDpad.
Not so with The Town (still think that's a dumb name). This one I'm approaching differently. I only end up writing a chapter in it every couple of weeks, which is also different than my other stuff. In the past, I've written one thing--focused on just the one project--and pushed it until completion. This time, I'm allowing myself to work in a couple of arenas.
Which reminds me: I have to work on one of my edited pieces. I just don't think it's quite ready for submission, but I've been far too lazy about sending out to agents. The laziness is "justified" because I don't want to edit the piece again, but I want to try to sell my book. This has put me in a position of having to do my least favorite thing about writing: Revising. I hate that--it's like listening to yourself on a recording, but for hours upon hours. I know it's necessary, and I'm sure I'll have a better story when I'm done, but I won't be happy while I do it. In fact, I know I've talked about that before on this blog. Had I the time, I would link it. But I don't.
So there.
Word count: 1,464
----
* Actually, I really want to draw a map and figure out where everyone lives in this town of Noah. The problem is, most maps of rural Utah towns are pretty boring: There's a main street, and then nice grids overlaying it, like a waffle iron was pressed on a paper and they used that as their basis. There's nothing wrong with that set up--it makes a lot of sense and uses a familiar system--but it's not like the map I made with Ash and Fire. In that book, I took a map of the City of London (not London, the city) and rotated it around. I then traced a bunch of the thoroughfares and streets, modifying it a little with Photoshop until I got the map to look the way I wanted to. Then I went through and added street name after street name, using my own arbitrary rules for what was a road or a street and how the different gates of the city mattered and were named. I ended up having so much fun making the map, I ended up writing the story only so that the map would have a purpose. Orson Scott Card talks about a similar experience he had in his How to Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy book (I think that's its title). While I don't really like a lot of Card's stuff, it's cool to think that a New York Times bestseller and I share some creative habits.