Planning to Write While on Vacation

This week poses a unique challenge for me.  Vacation.  You see, I've got this chain going on The Magic Spreadsheet.  It’s up to 64 days!  Sixty five after today, and I really want to keep that going.  This is by far the most writing I've ever done, and it would be a shame to quit now but with the traveling, walking and other stuff it’s going to be tough.

What we need is a plan!  That sounds funny, doesn't it?  A plan to write while on vacation!  I mean, isn't a vacation something you go on to get away from stuff like that?  Well I guess not.  Not in my situation anyway. 

So here’s the plan/plans.  Plan A:  Write in the car.  I need to make sure that my laptop battery is charged so that I can take advantage of any travel time that I’m not driving.  I have to be careful not to be too anti-social though.  If plan A doesn't work, there’s always plan B.  Plan B:  My normal writing time is at night while others are asleep, so that will probably come into play this week.  In order to outlast everyone else though, late night coffee will definitely be in order.  Caffeine soothes the writer’s soul, right? 

   

So there it is!  That’s the plan.  I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.  Hopefully, I’ll have a chain of 70 when I get home.  Fingers crossed!  I've got to go now, but I’ll be back soon and I’ll be write ‘n stuff!

The Power of The Magic Spreadsheet

It was a goal of mine to start writing on a regular basis this year.  I started out well enough, but my regularity didn't last very long.  I would write for a couple of days, and then, inevitably, take a few days off.  My inconsistencies were getting the best of me and my writing.  Then I discovered The Magic Spreadsheet through Mur Lafferty's podcast "I Should Be Writing."

I've been using The Magic Spreadsheet for almost two months now, and I'm happy to say that I've not missed a day of writing since I started.  Today marks day 51!  It seems that I've become regular.  You could possibly compare The Magic Spreadsheet to, wait for it, bran in a way.  Bran has the power to make you go, but The Magic Spreadsheet has the power to make you go write!  If you are a writer, you need to check this thing out.  If you haven't already, check it out here.

The beauty of the spreadsheet is that you can use it however you see fit.  I log my word count when I write fiction or when I write blog entries here or on themotolife.net.  Most of my writing is fiction.  I really need a schedule for the blogs as they are neglected on a regular basis.  Once a week for each is probably a good goal for them, I just need to decide on what days of the week the blog updates take place.  Decisions, decisions, decisions...

The spreadsheet can also be used for editing.  I haven't done this yet, but from what I understand, the consensus of users take a percentage of the words edited to use as word count.  Ten percent would give you 100 words to put toward word count for every 1,000 edited.  That however is not etched in stone.  I'll let you know how it goes when some editing gets done around here.

The point of all this though, is that The Magic Spreadsheet works.  It may not work for you, but it does for me and I know that it does for many others.  I see the proof every night when I go there to log my words for that day.  Speaking of logging words, I'm going to do that now.  So, take care and go write something.  I'll be here write 'n stuff!

Learning From the First Draft - Descriptions

Last night was good.  Last night, a story was finished.  A first draft of a story anyway.  It's not ready for the public and it may never be.  That's okay though.  Writing "The Rin and Finnius Story" was a good learning experience and I will take those lessons and apply them to the next story.  Maybe it can be for public consumption.

Rin and Finnius taught me that one of the biggest things that I need to work on is descriptions.  All kinds of descriptions.  People, places, things....Just everything.  The world in general.  During the writing, I found that I was good at putting my characters in a bland place.  The characters could be bland alongside their surroundings too.  Nobody likes bland.  Yuck!  As a result, the story suffered in both interest and length.

Let's address interest first.  It's hard to be interested in someone or something if you don't know that much about them or it.  Not that you need to know everything, a bit of mystery is always good.  The thing is though, if readers can't form an image of a scene in their mind's eye, there is a good chance they will put your story down and move on.  I can't blame them for that.  Unless you're drawing pictures, your descriptions need to be dead on or the reader will lose interest.  That's how it works for me.  All things considered though, I think the descriptions were better near the end of the story.  I'll see if that's really the case on the re-read in a few weeks.

And now the matter of length.  "The Rin and Finnius Story" came in at just over 27,000 words.  That's the word count that Word gives anyway.  It would really be less than that when you consider that some of the words that are there shouldn't be.  As I said before, this story was started with no real plan.  Therefore, many things were written that had to be re-written, and since I'm not one to throw anything away, those words are still hanging out in the document.  So, the cutting will begin soon.

After the cutting, the trimming of the fat so to speak, I've got a decision to make.  I could go back in and beef up the descriptions.  This would give me some valuable practice in a world that I'm already familiar with but needs to be fleshed out.  It would also beef up the word count and possibly make the story better in the process.  Option two is to keep cutting and shrink the scope of the story in hopes of pulling a short story from the wreckage.  This may be the easier of the two routes, but I have no idea what I'll do at this point.

The only thing that's for sure is that it felt great to finish that draft.  I'm going to plan a little more for the next story, but probably not as much as I should.  I'll probably get all excited and start writing the wrong stuff again.  Any planning is better than what I did this time though.  So until next time, keep on write 'n stuff!