Kevin's Watch

you're nervous! ? if your recent output is any indication you'll be FINE Murrin!! i, however, might throw up.

In case you haven't noticed, I write short prose.

In fact, I should perhaps mention - when I was a kid I used to like writing - usually just for school assignments - and I don't believe I ever actualy finished a story. I was virtually incapable of it, I'd keep adding more and more to it without ever working out how to bring it to a close. My short pieces work because I envisioned the whole scene in one go, or I had a specific goal in mind. The idea I have for a story now doesn't have an ending yet. I have a first half, and that's it, so I'm afraid of falling into the same old habit of just keeping going until it stops on its own (it never does).

there's no reason you WOULD have noticed but so do i. poems. "pieces" i like to call them. and i too get "scenes" in my head but have no idea what do with them or where to take them. the idea i have that i'm using for this project is completely new and based in something i recently wrote while sitting in a cafe. 4 paragraphs. and the title i listed on the site i made up on the fly from a line in those 4 paragraphs. last night, while here and answering posts, i figured out what the character is doing. i'm just gonna run with it and hope it happens!! this is where i prove to myself that i can do this, that i have studied, read, and digested enough about stories that i can write one. i don't care if it sucks i just want to answer my own question to myself once and for all. i'm tired of saying i am a writer and not being one.
ugh. now i'm getting nauseated again.

Sorry it took me so long to get an answer to you lucymay

www.ibdof.com

A great book site.

You have to go to user groups to sign up for nano as it is a hidden forum.

All are welcome there, though

Well, we can do naught but try, eh?

(I'm going to be putting regular posts on my blog about my progress, ideas, etc, if anyone's interested. I've already started with one about my plot idea.)

Murrin wrote:In case you haven't noticed, I write short prose.

In fact, I should perhaps mention - when I was a kid I used to like writing - usually just for school assignments - and I don't believe I ever actualy finished a story. I was virtually incapable of it, I'd keep adding more and more to it without ever working out how to bring it to a close. My short pieces work because I envisioned the whole scene in one go, or I had a specific goal in mind. The idea I have for a story now doesn't have an ending yet. I have a first half, and that's it, so I'm afraid of falling into the same old habit of just keeping going until it stops on its own (it never does).

I have a very hard time finishing things too. I tend to like the characters and the situation so much, that things just keep going and going.

There is a good book I can recomment called "Beginnings, Middles, and Ends" by Nancy Springer. It is a good resource.

erm, haven't even thought of a plot yet.

You're not alone. There are a lot of people on the forums there who are going to just sit down on tuesday and start writing the first thing they think of.

Isn't that more or less the idea?

You're allowed in the rules to plan, research, draw outlines - there are people who have everything finished except the writing. I think the spur-of-the-moment and completely nonsensical writers have them greatly outnumbered, however.

The front page does say the aim is to encourage spontaneity.

Ah well, for better or worse, I'm in.

Don't expect to see me though. It doesn't like my pictures.

Murrin wrote:You're allowed in the rules to plan, research, draw outlines - there are people who have everything finished except the writing. I think the spur-of-the-moment and completely nonsensical writers have them greatly outnumbered, however.

Last year, I had a concept, characters, setting, and a general understanding of the plot I wanted to develop.

This year, I have two or three VERY vague ideas. I was gonna work on that this weekend.

I didn't.

thanks for the link to IBDOF Cho.

i must have gone ditzy as i opened up my favorites file where i keep such links and lo and behold found it already there!! i must have run across it sometime and put it in there but never looked at it again! *doh*


i've decided not to pressure myself on this thing. i'll write for an hour or so every day and at the end of the month we'll see what we see. leave it at that. if i write for an hour every day SOMEthing WILL emerge. whatever it is it is.

sheesh.

I've decided to give it a try, too. I sincerely doubt I will get anywhere close to the limit, and I have no ideas or plans. I will just start typing and see where it goes.

The nice thing about this is that it won't matter if I get sent off on disaster deployment in the middle of it. I have been very reluctant to commit to anything that might affect other people (helping out with Joy's Reviewer's Choice; getting the Dune read going again at Ahira's Hangar; planning anything to do with guests or family members for the next few months) with the possible deployment hanging over my life.

This is something I can do, will probably enjoy, and nothing and no one will be hurt if I have to miss 2-3 weeks of it.

ChoChiyo wrote:Last year, I had a concept, characters, setting, and a general understanding of the plot I wanted to develop.

This year, I have two or three VERY vague ideas. I was gonna work on that this weekend.

Pfft, if I even gave it any thought in advance, I'd feel like I was cheating. Besides, my pre-planned stuff is generally my worst.

That's one of the other things I want to work on sometime. If I spend too much time working out an idea and getting it clear in my head, then when it comes to writing it nothing I write matches up to this picture I've built up of it in my head. I'm hoping I'll get over that with practice.

Between kids and work and everything else, its been way too long (years) since I've given myself time to just sit down and write and have fun. I don't care even if my stuff ends up incoherent and rambling and disconnected. It's a way to get myself back into something that once gave me great joy.

I have the littlest germ of an idea, and when I get home tonight at about half past midnight, I'm going to sit down at my keyboard for half an hour or so and just run with it.

At this point, do we just save it on our computers, or do we have to upload it to NaNoWriMo somehow?

i'm doing it long hand, so no way will i be loading it to any computer any time soon. i write most of my stuff long hand.

I have deliberately not thought about what I'm going to write.

I'll probably log my progress in this thread.

Wow, now this was unexpected: Ten minutes before the start, and suddenly my story transforms inside my head. I'd originally intended to write fantasy, but the first idea I got was too good not to go with, and after a bit of development turned out wasn't fantasy at all - but I couldn't think of an ending to the story, and it didn't have much in the way of plot. The idea was to focus on my character and his personality, but I couldn't see where it was going. Now, I don't know what caused it to happen, but a few minuts ago the story... shifted, I suppose, in my mind. Suddenly the story is fantasy again; my fears about not being able to pull off the character study are lost because there's a story going on around it to compliment the internal parts. Suddenly I know what happens after that ambiguous early point in the plot, and suddenly I know why I had had been considering adding a second character and how he fits into things. I think I'm going to go with this new idea.