Write Every Day: Day 11

[the_siobhan]

It's Remembrance Day in Canada, which is a bank holiday so I get to work on project today. Can I get a wahoo!

One of the things I have tried to do to improve my own writing is to seek out pearls of wisdom from successful writers. Stephen King's On Writing came very highly recommended by a lot of my friends, but to be honest I found it more of an autobiography than a reference. A good book, but just not what I was specifically looking for. OTOH, my gf loaned me Orson Scott Card's Characters & Viewpoint, which I actually think I got a lot more out of.

So, do you have any recommendations of other writers who are good at teaching the tricks of their craft?



Day 11 Tally:
china_shop, firecat, badly_knitted, luzula, sylvanwitch, shadaras, thevetia, sakana17, brainwane, sanguinity, yasaman, cornerofmadness, china_shop, nafs, lferion, saki101, alexseanchai, phrenk, firecat, shopfront, silveradept, zuzu, trobadora, ysilme, iberiandoctor, auroracloud

Day 10:
china_shop, badly_knitted, luzula, sylvanwitch, alexseanchai, shadaras, sanguinity, brainwane, nafs, firecat, yasaman, cornerofmadness, sakana17, saki101, lferion, phrenk, auroracloud, iberiandoctor, silveradept, thevetia, trobadora, ysilme

Day 9:
china_shop, shadaras, sylvanwitch, alexseanchai, sanguinity, saki101, nafs, yasaman, cornerofmadness, lferion, sakana17, phrenk, badly_knitted, ysilme, silveradept, solo, carenejeans, auroracloud, iberiandoctor, luzula, brainwane, trobadora

Day 8:
china_shop, sylvanwitch, badly_knitted, luzula, saki101, silveradept, sanguinity, shadaras, thevetia, brainwane, nafs, cornerofmadness, lferion, sakana17, yasaman, phrenk, alexseanchai, firecat, auroracloud, ysilme, solo, carenejeans, iberiandoctor, trobadora

Day 7:
china_shop, shopfront, falkner, badly_knitted, luzula, trobadora, sylvanwitch, shadaras, nafs, brainwane, sanguinity, lferion, yasaman, sakana17, phrenk, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, firecat, saki101, silveradept, auroracloud, ysilme, iberiandoctor

Day 6:
china_shop, ysilme, trobadora, luzula, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, saki101, sanguinity, shadaras, brainwane, nafs, alexseanchai, cornerofmadness, yasaman, lferion, sakana17, phrenk, shopfront, silveradept, iberiandoctor, firecat, solo, carenejeans, auroracloud

Day 5:
china_shop, badly_knitted, luzula, shadaras, sylvanwitch, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, cornerofmadness, lferion, brainwane, saki101, phrenk, firecat, ysilme, shopfront, yasaman, carenejeans, houseof9cats, thevetia, robadora, silveradept, auroracloud, trobadora

Day 4:
china_shop, shopfront, luzula, alexseanchai, shadaras, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, ysilme, sanguinity, saki101, silveradept, nafs, yasaman, thevetia, sakana17, cornerofmadness, lferion, phrenk, solo, iberiandoctor, firecat, brainwane, carenejeans, yasaman, auroracloud, trobadora

Day 3:
china_shop, alexseanchai, alexcat, sylvanwitch, sakana17, thevetia, nafs, lferion, cornerofmadness, phrenk, solo, badly_knitted, luzula, shadaras, yasaman, brainwane, trobadora, ysilme, sanguinity, silveradept, iberiandoctor, firecat, carenejeans, auroracloud

Day 2:
china_shop, shadaras, falkner, luzula, badly_knitted, alexseanchai, trobadora, saki101, sylvanwitch, brainwane, thevetia, lferion, cornerofmadness, nafs, sakana17, yasaman, solo, phrenk, auroracloud, ysilme, sanguinity, silveradept, alexcat, iberiandoctor, firecat, carenejeans

Day 1:
china_shop, sylvanwitch, luzula, badly_knitted, trobadora, falkner, alexseanchai, silveradept, shadaras, sanguinity, thevetia, nafs, cornerofmadness, lferion, sakana17, alexcat, marvelouscity, saki101, yasaman, solo, auroracloud, phrenk, shopfront, brainwane, dreamwriteremmy, ysilme, , iberiandoctor, firecat, carenejeans

Let me know if I missed your name at any point. And participation is always open, so jump in with a comment any time.

Comments

[firecat]

wahoo!

Day ten: 895 words

[badly_knitted]

Nov 11th - 1000 words, ten Doctor Who drabbles. Had to go out this morning, which wiped me out. My brain didn't want to do anything plotty, so drabbles, but I hit my groove and wrote more of them than I expected.

Also 24 rows on my lacy top.

Now I just want to sleep.

[luzula]

Good luck, I hope you get some writing done!

Wordcount for 11th of November: 400 words on Yuletide fic + 300 on poly fic
Total wordcount on poly fic: 36,200
Total wordcount on Yuletide fic: 1,400

Progress on the Yuletide fic, that's good...

[sylvanwitch]

I have a visceral reaction against writing advice of any kind but especially the kind that comes in book or blog form. I think I live in fear that I'll find out I've been doing it wrong and that once I get that sick-cold feeling in my gut, I'll be unable to continue writing as I always have, so I avoid writing advice like a plague. That said, I don't think there's anything at all wrong with (a) reading other writers' advice; or (b) writing writing advice. ;-)

Today, I added 878 words to a new chapter (Chapter 20). Yay!

[shadaras]

Today I wrote 2.4k and hit 25k (minimum wordcount) on my big bang fic. :)

I also did final edits on exchange fics that will be revealed at midnight tonight.

[the_siobhan]

Well done!

[the_siobhan]

Well done!

[the_siobhan]

Thank you. It went pretty well today.

Well done on words!

[the_siobhan]

That's entirely fair.

Well done on words!

[the_siobhan]

Well done on words!

[thevetia]

Catching up to Day 10: 96 words.
Day 11: 375 words.

[sakana17]

Day 11: 208 words and some edits.

[brainwane]

Thank you for the daily maintenance and for the thought-provoking prompts!

Day 11 checkin: 2135 words (like 80-90% copying and rearranging from draft blog posts), which is good progress on a couple chapters!

So, do you have any recommendations of other writers who are good at teaching the tricks of their craft?

You have reminded me that I am writing nonfiction and that I have basically read zero nonfiction writing advice on the book/essay level. I've enjoyed all the Anne Lamott I've ever read, and some of it was advice that applies well to memoir, but I'm not writing memoir right now. Probably the most influential piece of nonfiction writing advice for me that was written by a successful writer has been Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language".

[sanguinity]

Afraid I can't recommend any writing books, but I'm interested to see what others enjoy.


I wrote the end of a story, titled/summarised/tagged, and posted it. Woo-hoo me!

And then I spent a chunk of this evening betaing a story for someone else. Woo-hoo me!

[yasaman]

Day 11: 863 words on my Yuletide fic! Just one wrap up scene left and then I'm done! Also did some prepping of Scrivener files and very preliminary note taking for some upcoming WIPs.

[cornerofmadness]

I don't know if it's helpful or not, but I post writing links every sunday

Today I got 3640 for the nano today. I'm getting close to finishing the novel

[china_shop]

FWIW, I remember reading On Writing Well: an informal guide to writing nonfiction by William Zinsser, and being really impressed by it, but it was so long ago I don't actually remember any of the content. :-) /dork

[china_shop]

I remember enjoying Stephen King's On Writing but not feeling like it was particularly applicable to me. About a year ago, on a friend's rec, I read Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker and said on my journal, "while I don't think I'll adopt the methodology wholesale, it had some things that are useful to think about, which are informing (improving?) my current fic series." In particular, I found it really good for theme and character. I continue to be terrible at plotting. ;-p It's quite short, btw.

12th: Drafted a discussion post I'm scheduled to post this weekend, and added an alibi sentence to an exchange treat in post-beta edits. (I'll finish that tomorrow.)

[nafs]

Alibi sentence today.

I liked Diana Wynne Jones' Reflections on the Magic of Writing, which is a collection of her essays and lectures. There's also a novella Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen which has sort of tangential writing advice. (by Fay Weldon)

[lferion]

Day 11 - 342 words on a piece that I think will become the current Fan Flashworks piece, and a post.

[saki101]

This 'Wahoo!!' is for you! :-D

I don't have any printed works on writing to recommend, but a piece of advice given to me by the person I consider my writing mentor was phrased in the form of a question: "What are you trying to say?" I return to that question every time I'm stuck with a story or writing in circles or going off on tangents, and I find it very useful.

11 November check-in: 175 words of the scene following the one I wrote yesterday. I was grateful I hadn't wanted to start a new beginning yet again. It remains to be seen whether I stick with it or, to put it another way, whether it is helping me say what I want to say or leading me astray!

[alexseanchai]

A little progress on where the firelight fades, which is now just about six hundred words from breaking a personal record I set in 2007…so naturally I ran into a scene break I wasn't expecting, and (to maintain structure) I have to switch to the other PoV character, whose opinions on the next scenebit I hadn't considered bc they weren't going to witness it…

[satoyan]

Day 11: 3,982 nano words. I don't know! I'm going to stop thinking about it for now, lol, and just keep aiming for 2,000 words a day until it feels unsustainable or pointless or some other feeling that would cause me to reconsider.

[badly_knitted]

Thank you!

[firecat]

Day 11: 2530 words

I liked Ray Bradbury's book on writing because it was different from other books on writing. In the words of one of the GoodReads reviewers, "Bradbury's book...deals more with how your imagination can work for you."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/103761.Zen_in_the_Art_of_Writing

I found the exercises in Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft useful.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68024.Steering_the_Craft

[the_siobhan]

I'll add you to both. Well done!

[the_siobhan]

Well done!

[the_siobhan]

I think I may have read that essay but it was so long ago I'm not sure I remember any of the content. I might have to go look at it again.

That is an impressive amount of work added, well done!

[the_siobhan]

Whoo-hoo you!

[the_siobhan]

Well done!

[the_siobhan]

Some of them really are. Which brings me to today's topic, which is blogs. :-)

Great wordcount! Well done!

[the_siobhan]

Some of them really are. Which brings me to today's topic, which is blogs. :-)

Great wordcount! Well done!

[the_siobhan]

That sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

Well done on words!

[shopfront]

Managed to hit my (adjusted because of how many days I've missed) daily goal for Nano. I've crept from 1700 up to 2200ish, so it's going... interestingly, though it is at least still going in some capacity.

[the_siobhan]

The Diana Wynne Jones sounds interesting, based on what I know about her.

Well done on getting an alibi sentence in there.

[the_siobhan]

Well done!

[the_siobhan]

Thank you!

That's such good advice and so simple.

Well done on words!

[the_siobhan]

Ain't it always the way.

Well done on words!

[the_siobhan]

Well done on words. I hope you find your groove again with this particular work.

[the_siobhan]

Those both sound really useful. I particularly love LeGuin.

Well done on words!

[the_siobhan]

Well done!

[silveradept]

I don't have specific works, because Seanan McGuire is usually more of a Twitter thread and conventions person, but has always been a champion of what seems like generic advice - read the genre you're trying to write in, write stuff, even if it's not going to be something that's eventually saleable, and, more uniquely for her, don't knock fanfic as an enterprise, because fic audiences are really good at giving you feedback and publishing fic gives you practice at writing. (Seanan tells stories about how having written some really good Buffy fic landed her an agent.)

The thing I usually think of as the most useful writing advice is really meant for any type of creative writing endeavor, but Ora Glass, of This American Life fame, gives a radio interview about the Taste Gap. People who are starting a creative endeavor knows what good looks or sounds like, and knows that what they're doing isn't that. But if you stick with trying to create the thing, and learn how to do it more and more, even though stuff isn't going to be up to the level of your taste, eventually you get to the point where skill matches taste, and things go a lot better from there.

There's also a podcast from the Night Vale creators called Start With This, which I haven't listened to all of the episodes of, but they try to break down the craft of creative endeavors into smaller pieces and focus each episode on one of those pieces. If you like them, the podcast is free. If you don't like them, then it's still free, but it may not be as useful.

Day 11 was spent transferring and Director's Cut annotating the last of the first run of the Giving of Grief, so now I'm caught up to where the author changes hands at AO3, where I will sit on my hands until I get through the last of his works live, and then I will go Director's Cut through all of that as well.

[cornerofmadness]

cool and thanks

[the_siobhan]

I don't have twitter but I do follow McGuire's tumblr and I've always liked her approach.

And podcasts are a future topic, so now I have something to say because I don't know of any. :-)

Well done with all your hard work!