Robyn’s Writing

Yup. Finished it today. I’m going to upload it to my online critique group, see what they say about it, then when it’s all edited I’ll post it here.

It was fun to write it.  Didn’t take me that long. I spent some time on it, on my day off. Then today, at the end of work time, I finished it up.

I read it to my kids tonight. Chris (12) said it was good, but she’s not soooo into unicorns.  Claire (8-1/2 — I always have to put the half there) got teary eyed and hugged me. I figured that meant it was a kids story, not a tween story. Amazing, though, I also read it to hubby Peter.  He listened to the entire story and said something along the lines of “I’m amazed you can think of stuff like that.”  Heh!

I’m content. I set out to do something and I finished it.  And it turned out okay, I think.

I will tweak, then post in time for kids’ Christmas.

I am writing a Christmas short story and entering it into a contest.

Here’s a blurb about it:

Spec the Halls is a contest for speculative winter holiday-themed fiction, artwork, and poetry. The holiday may be fictional or real; it may be Christmas as we know and love it, or it may be something much stranger.

I’ll skip the artwork submission (anyone who has seen my stick figures will know why).  I have come up with an interesting fantasy Christmas story though.  For some reason these days I’m writing urban fantasy short stories, full of wonderful magic and mages and wizards.  Nope, no dragons yet. Or elves and dwarves. Just people who can perform magic!

Another intersting snippit about the contest:

The point of this contest is to share the (speculative) spirit of Christmas. To submit, you must place your story/artwork/poem on the internet in a publicly accessible forum. This means your website, your blog, a shared documents/images service that allows you to share with everyone, or an online community that you belong to.

So, I’ll write my story, post it for all to see on this blog and submit it in the contest. Should be fun.

If anyone is interested you can find more details here.

Well, it starts next weekend, at the stroke of midnight. If I’m still awake after midnight Friday night, and feeling foolish enough, I might just start writing then.

Thirty days to write 50,000 words, translates to approximately 1,667 words per day.  For me, that’s about 3-1/2 pages of writing at my current settings in Word.  While it can seem like a lot of writing, considering that I can type around 100 words a minute, well no maybe only about 80 on my laptop, that’s just 21 minutes of intense writing per day. It doesn’t have to be grammatically perfect nor even make that much sense as far as continuity, etc., it just needs to be raw story, the imperfect stuff.

One idea, to keep up with an average  word count, is to write more than 1,667 words a day. That way, if something comes up and you can’t write (like a proposed three day camping trip we may make) you can have enough words ’saved up’ to still be up to the average.  Weekends are a good time to do this, and fortunately it starts on the weekend!  Yay!

A couple of people have asked if I’ll post it as I write.  No, I don’t think so. If there are any lucid sections of incredibly well written prose (which is unlikely) I might. Or if I end up writing something so terrible one day that it’s absolute drivel I might post it just for a laugh.

Although it may seem a complete waste of time to some, or a less than ideal way to write a novel, there are benefits. Already I’ve done a lot more planning of what my  novel will be about and what my characters will be like than normal.  I’m going to try to write down scene ideas and a map of how they should progress too, so that if I get stuck on writing one scene I can flip to another, and begin further into the story.

It’s also been good for me to figure out how many words I have to write per day, and what that translates to in terms of time and pages of written text.  From there I can begin to plan how much time I will need to set aside, and where I will get those snatches of time.

I’ve not applied much logical thinking or planning to my writing. I’m more of an inspirational, ’sit down and it will come’ writer.  That’s great, it’s worked so far.  But now that I am adding to my toolbox, I should become an even better, more organized writer.

Just imagine, had I set goals for finishing ‘Whispers’, you’d all be reading it by now.

is also called ‘March of the Gifted’, I changed the working title with the first re-write.  I’m about ready to post another chapter, and will probably put it up here.

My aim is to finish all the chapters before Nov. 1st NaNo starts, as I don’t want to have anything hanging when I’m concentrating on that. Wish me luck

I’ve added some things on my writing pages, namely episode one of ‘Home Life — 2010 + +’, a pretty light-hearted piece that I’ve just started; a copy of an old old story I wrote called ‘The Flood’ which some may have remembered reading before.  Not very professional, in places, but interesting.

Then there’s a few short-short stories that I’ve written as writing assignmnents.  These were written primarily to develp character sketches, or to write a very short story.  I’m still working on editing a couple of them, so they’re not ‘final’ but they’re getting there.

NaNoWriMo is almost here. I’m going to journal my progress (or lack of it) via this blog, so everyone can share in my triumphs and defeats.

Currently I have made an outline with a summary of the plot progression, I’ve decided who my main character(s) will be, decided on the genre and style (YA Sci-Fi).  It will feature the return of Atlantans to Earth, and of course a plot to take over the world.  Main character is named Claire as Christie featured in “In Armageddon’s Wake.”

Never having participated before, I enlisted the help of a mentor who will keep track of my progress, egg me on when my word count fails, and give helpful tips on how to keep writing even if I can’t think of anything to write.

In reading different posts, blogs and comments I’ve come up with a varied list of things people have tried, though some are not recommended when it comes to enhancing creativity. I won’t point out which ones, I’m sure you can figure that out.

- listen to music and type out song words

- type the same word over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

- let your character begin telling a long involved story about something totally unrelated.

- let one of the characters become involved in a sub-plot, and go on telling that story.

- write short stories into your main story.

- write jibberish or nonsense

- write pages and page of knock-knock jokes

- write “can not” instead of “can’t” (two words instead of one)

- write out numbers, such as four hundred and thirty three thousand, six hundred and fifty one.  (eleven words instead of one.)

I’m sure there’s more, and I’m equally as sure I wlil discover them as the month progresses.

If anyone else is participating, feel free to add me as your buddy.

• Right now, I’m doing a first edit on Chapter 36 and 37 of “Whispers”. Chapter 36 is about Grainor, Jonthor and Darina. An action chapter. Chapter 37, I believe, will be Jala’s chapter, and will start to wrap up the novel. (Note: It is up for major revisions.)

• I’m gearing up for NaNoWriMo by making an outline of my proposed Novel. Here’s a synopsis as it stands now. Chance are high that the plot may change, and the novel end up totally different than expected at the end of November.

“Claire was a typical fifteen year old, living in rural Tasmania.  Her father worked at a petrol station,  her mother took on part time house-cleaning.  Her older sisters lived away from home.  Aside from some small blackouts she experienced from time to time, her life couldn’t have been more normal. Then Aaron turned up.

From day one Aaron captivated her.  As soon as her young heart belonged only to him he swept her into a world of intrigue, mystery and the paranormal. She discovered things about herself that horrified her.  Was she really going to destroy her world and the lives of all her loved ones, in order to advance Aaron and his friends’ plans?  Did she have any alternative?”