You can throw down words in a story, slap ideas together, make your characters dance like puppets, but the story is not ready if it doesn't feel right in your head. A million people can read what you wrote and love it, but do you have to approve? The story might sound good and the lines well written, but if it doesn't feel right in my head, I am not satisfied. I actually get an uncomfortable feeling down my spine, a kind of tension until I make the changes that feel right to me. Of course there is always room for improvement, and I'm never quite satisfied, but there comes a point when you release the story to others and that doesn't happen till it's right for me.
Do you have this same problem? Is this a problem to begin with? I mean...we should write for ourselves first. Right? This is your love, your interest.
Write for yourself and drag the others with you.
Jennifer
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Personal Evil
So I'm a procrastinator, lazy down to my core, and I'm easily distracted. Is it by cleaning? No. Playing with my dogs? No. Intellectual conversation with my husband? No. Bettering myself by helping my fellow man? Heck no! Is it tv? Is it that thing that hypnotizes though I retain nothing useful from it? Is it the constant flipping and seeing nothing the whole time? Is it evil!?! Why, yes...yes it is.
Like books, tv shows sometimes inspire me to write, but the amount of quality shows I actually watch is so minimal to the amount of tv I allow myself to watch. Here I am,finally turning on the music, and now I may be to tired to write. Why? Because the evil tv had me in it's clutches for far to many hours.
I admire those of you who have learned to shut if off or get rid of it all together. You are my heroes whom I worship from afar because there is no damn way I'm cutting myself off.
Jennifer
Like books, tv shows sometimes inspire me to write, but the amount of quality shows I actually watch is so minimal to the amount of tv I allow myself to watch. Here I am,finally turning on the music, and now I may be to tired to write. Why? Because the evil tv had me in it's clutches for far to many hours.
I admire those of you who have learned to shut if off or get rid of it all together. You are my heroes whom I worship from afar because there is no damn way I'm cutting myself off.
Jennifer
Monday, January 24, 2011
January 2011 Challenges
We have a plan...a plan for one member to come up with one or two writing challenges to present to the other members of our group. I started this trend with two challenges for January. Yeah, it's almost over, but maybe you'll find something interesting in one of these challenges and want to do one yourself.
Challenge One
Write a short story between 2,000 to 10,000 words.
Basic Idea - A mysterious stranger saves your main character, only to disappear without a word. Your main character becomes obsessed with finding this savior for whatever personal reasons you come up with.
Include the following:
An argument at a food establishment
A pet
An addiction
Lost shoes
A photo
Two surprises to your main character
A minor character with a strange or funny name and explain how they got that name
Challenge Two
Write a flash fiction story between 500 to 1,000 words.
Basic Idea – The chaos after something is spilled
Include the following:
Danger
A terrible reaction
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Our Group
2010 brought an interesting new development in the lives of several people who participated in Nanowrimo. Wait...you don't know what Nanowrimo is? Go flog yourself....do it! I suppose I should begin there.
Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month and was brought to us by Chris Baty and his merry men of writers. Have you ever told yourself that one day you will write that great novel that's been stuck in your head, but you can't quite get it down because life keeps kicking you around? The idea was to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November to get that first step done for us writers who...well, might be a bit of a procrastinator. I'm sure it started small enough but now it's a big deal to a lot of writers. You can find out a whole bunch more at their site www.nanowrimo.org.
I have been trying to accomplish this feat for five years, and 2010 was the magical year. There were a couple factors that made me win for the first time ever. First, my vacation was shot all to hell so there were no traveling plans in my month. Second, and more importantly, there was a change in the way this challenge was handled for our area. The chat room allowed most of us nerdy, fearful, antisocial writers to interact immediately with other creatures like ourselves without the terror of looking each other in the eye. But looking each other in the eye is what we ended up doing. Opening up and being silly online made us crave more personal interactions, and we started going to write ins (designated dates and times where a bunch of writers get together to talk and write and push each other forward in our challenge). This resulted in more talking and more meetings and soon we acted like humans. *Gasp* Yes, it was amazing.
These interactions and these friendships I was developing were having a major impact on my progress. Needless to say, I won. Five years later and I finally wrote 50K in 30 days. I nearly cried, the big sap I am. Some of us were so impressed and excited about how motivated we were, that we didn't want it to stop. Why should we stop talking and stop writing after November? No reason. So we developed Write On! with the plan to keep writing and keep socializing after November.
Now what are we doing here blogging? Why not? Everyone is doing it, why can't we? We figure we'll scream out to the world what we're accomplishing (or not accomplishing) and whatever BS we want to say. It's an expressive internet world, and we're just trying to find our space.
Jennifer
Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month and was brought to us by Chris Baty and his merry men of writers. Have you ever told yourself that one day you will write that great novel that's been stuck in your head, but you can't quite get it down because life keeps kicking you around? The idea was to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November to get that first step done for us writers who...well, might be a bit of a procrastinator. I'm sure it started small enough but now it's a big deal to a lot of writers. You can find out a whole bunch more at their site www.nanowrimo.org.
I have been trying to accomplish this feat for five years, and 2010 was the magical year. There were a couple factors that made me win for the first time ever. First, my vacation was shot all to hell so there were no traveling plans in my month. Second, and more importantly, there was a change in the way this challenge was handled for our area. The chat room allowed most of us nerdy, fearful, antisocial writers to interact immediately with other creatures like ourselves without the terror of looking each other in the eye. But looking each other in the eye is what we ended up doing. Opening up and being silly online made us crave more personal interactions, and we started going to write ins (designated dates and times where a bunch of writers get together to talk and write and push each other forward in our challenge). This resulted in more talking and more meetings and soon we acted like humans. *Gasp* Yes, it was amazing.
These interactions and these friendships I was developing were having a major impact on my progress. Needless to say, I won. Five years later and I finally wrote 50K in 30 days. I nearly cried, the big sap I am. Some of us were so impressed and excited about how motivated we were, that we didn't want it to stop. Why should we stop talking and stop writing after November? No reason. So we developed Write On! with the plan to keep writing and keep socializing after November.
Now what are we doing here blogging? Why not? Everyone is doing it, why can't we? We figure we'll scream out to the world what we're accomplishing (or not accomplishing) and whatever BS we want to say. It's an expressive internet world, and we're just trying to find our space.
Jennifer
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