by TheHack on January 24, 2012
I have virtually no free time and so many big idea plans in my head of things that I want to do and add to an already packed schedule. Instead of making big grandiose writing plans of finishing a novel and winning the Hugo this year, I’m focusing small on my hobby writing.
Really small.
100 words a day.
That frequently takes five to ten minutes. Or less if I have a good idea what I plan to write.
100 words is something that you can do while on hold waiting for a conference call to start at work or while the kids brush their teeth or before you fall asleep or while you wait in line or during a commercial break. 100 words is really nothing at all and barely worth doing.
But.
100 words a day will get me about 3000 words a month pretty easily which would be enough for a rough draft of most of the short stories that I think up. 100 words also frequently turns into 150 when you finish out the paragraph or 500 when you hit a neat little groove. So it is completely reasonable to expect that to turn into about 4-5000 words a month.
Do that for a year and you have a short rough draft of a short novel. Or just a bunch of crappy sentences that count as practice while learning what it takes to right a battle scene or a conversation between a father and son or a political under the table deal or whatever you happen to be hacking away on with your writing.
So far it has gotten me over 1000 words in the last week on the details, details, details story I am working on.
by TheHack on January 18, 2012
I just started reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I am only a couple chapters in and already drowning in details. Everything, everything and everything is described. Which right away helps define the characters and the things that are important to him by what he decides to tell us and say about them. Instead of just saying he is a rich, elitist type of dude or having other characters say it about him, you learn it by the things the he buys and the things he scoffs others for thinking about and buying.
It provides an interesting distance between the main character and the other characters since there is so much focus on the things and details and less about what he thinks about them.
I have an idea for a plot that I have never started because I can’t get very interested in the main character. One of those destined hero kids.
It might be interesting to tell the story from the older guide who initially saves him and drags him through the world but doesn’t actually like the kid but have that guide character focus on the details to an excessive degree instead of the kid. He could kind of create an emotional distance to the kid by nearly ignoring him and getting lost in the details of the world and the mission. The kid could practically turn into luggage which could present its own problems later on in the story.
Hmm. Sounds like I need to open up a text editor soon and start pounding away.
by TheHack on July 21, 2010
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” -Helen Keller
I have a full day of work followed by volunteer hours at the library followed by homework hours as I head into the final week of summer school. So my small goal today is to get started on a story that I outlined yesterday and just write about 250 words of the first scene.
What small tasks are you going to heroically attack today on the way to your larger goal?
by TheHack on July 20, 2010
I have a few writing articles that I like to re-read whenever I need a kick of inspiration. This is one of my favorites about how long it takes to learn to be a writer. One million words.
I would guess that I’m around 100,000 which means any day now…
One of my goals would be to get to around 200,000 in the next year.
How far along our you on your path of practicing writing fiction? What kind of schedule do you have yourself on to get through those million words?
by TheHack on July 19, 2010
Here is a photo prompt for you.
What are these guys up to?
Are they celebrating the birth of a new baby? Are they celebrating their city’s football team winning the championship? Are they plotting a bank robbery? Or did they just invent a new three person, every man for himself, thumb wrestling game?
