-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
WritersEra |OT| Publish before you die, writing writer writes
- Thread starter weemadarthur
- Start date
- OT
I doubt I'd make that (I wrote.... 15, 000 words this month, which is fast for me) but I'll join in anyway!
cool. I will try to stay motivated and working on a prize pool... though I suppose I don't need prizes until the end of next month but still :P
now to formally write up some stuff and PM a mod to make sure it's alright to run such a competition since it will have prizes :P
now to formally write up some stuff and PM a mod to make sure it's alright to run such a competition since it will have prizes :P
hmmm I could push those last words to get to a nicer number but eh whatever. 34905 words in feb isn't too bad.
as for my little contest I haven't officially gotten permission to make a thread for it yet, so until I do I will just run it in this thread I guess.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZBxz97L-tg8FA8tncq7MN6BfjyAw4ouC02ClpRI8GyY/edit#gid=0 is the doc for it, and it has the partial prize list. I will continue to update that slowly. it takes a while to go through my keys and it's not high priority to me since I won't need it until the end of march.
Anyways the plan is for anyone that gets 25k words to get a prize if they want, and anyone that beats me to get two of them (prizes chosen first by the person with the most words and then going down... but uh, I might do a pick for the first person to get to 25k :P)
I will write up all of the details later, but if I take my average words for the year so far your goal to beat me will be around 39,964.239 words (aka there is a good chance I get at least 40k next month.) I don't plan on increasing my pace at all for this little challenge, but well sometimes I get really into a scene and write a lot more. recently I have been stopping shortly after 1k words though since I don't have things planned out super well right now, so I fear if I write to much I will run out of stuff to write and have issues getting my daily goal the next day.
anyways.... feel free to add your name in one of the first 40 slots (I think it was 40 that I set up lol) if you want prizes please use your resetera name so I can easily PM people.
feel free to drag who ever you want into the challenge.
Remember for the challenge I just want people writing (for non work/school stuff) I don't care if it's song lyrics, poems (we have a creative poetry thread still... I think...) creative writing challenges, fanfics, your future million seller novel or anything else as long as you are writing in a way that isn't designed to communicate with people (aka texting people or forum posts ect) you can count it.
Remember to have fun, and just write. You would be amazed how quickly words can add up if you can find 15 minutes here and there to write during the day. even a hundred words a day still adds up to over 3k words by the end of the month.
Also I included a monthly goal, you don't have to set anything, but it wouldn't be bad to put in a 25k word goal :P For me I put in 31k since I do 1k words a day. So if I don't make that it means my streak has died somewhere lol.
anyways if anyone has questions just ask... I am mostly designing this in free time when I am waiting for something to happen or watching stuff, so it's not going to be anything fancy. but hopefully people enjoy the idea. and it inspires some of you to write more than you normally would have.
as for my little contest I haven't officially gotten permission to make a thread for it yet, so until I do I will just run it in this thread I guess.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZBxz97L-tg8FA8tncq7MN6BfjyAw4ouC02ClpRI8GyY/edit#gid=0 is the doc for it, and it has the partial prize list. I will continue to update that slowly. it takes a while to go through my keys and it's not high priority to me since I won't need it until the end of march.
Anyways the plan is for anyone that gets 25k words to get a prize if they want, and anyone that beats me to get two of them (prizes chosen first by the person with the most words and then going down... but uh, I might do a pick for the first person to get to 25k :P)
I will write up all of the details later, but if I take my average words for the year so far your goal to beat me will be around 39,964.239 words (aka there is a good chance I get at least 40k next month.) I don't plan on increasing my pace at all for this little challenge, but well sometimes I get really into a scene and write a lot more. recently I have been stopping shortly after 1k words though since I don't have things planned out super well right now, so I fear if I write to much I will run out of stuff to write and have issues getting my daily goal the next day.
anyways.... feel free to add your name in one of the first 40 slots (I think it was 40 that I set up lol) if you want prizes please use your resetera name so I can easily PM people.
feel free to drag who ever you want into the challenge.
Remember for the challenge I just want people writing (for non work/school stuff) I don't care if it's song lyrics, poems (we have a creative poetry thread still... I think...) creative writing challenges, fanfics, your future million seller novel or anything else as long as you are writing in a way that isn't designed to communicate with people (aka texting people or forum posts ect) you can count it.
Remember to have fun, and just write. You would be amazed how quickly words can add up if you can find 15 minutes here and there to write during the day. even a hundred words a day still adds up to over 3k words by the end of the month.
Also I included a monthly goal, you don't have to set anything, but it wouldn't be bad to put in a 25k word goal :P For me I put in 31k since I do 1k words a day. So if I don't make that it means my streak has died somewhere lol.
anyways if anyone has questions just ask... I am mostly designing this in free time when I am waiting for something to happen or watching stuff, so it's not going to be anything fancy. but hopefully people enjoy the idea. and it inspires some of you to write more than you normally would have.
So one of the things I like to do before starting a book is to write a note to myself the night before. I've found that reminding myself to have fun and not be a douchebag helps a lot, because if I get stuck, I can reread the note and then press on. The note for my next book is thus:
To be fair, the first one was a lot longer and more in depth about failure and at least you're trying, but as I go, I found that it doesn't really matter how long they are as long as they exist. I didn't do this for my second book and writing that sucked.
To be fair, the first one was a lot longer and more in depth about failure and at least you're trying, but as I go, I found that it doesn't really matter how long they are as long as they exist. I didn't do this for my second book and writing that sucked.
I'm not sure if there are any screenwriters in here, but I'm trying to put together a list of some decent screenwriting competitions in 2018 and for the first time submit to them. Wanted to give a head's up for anyone else interested that the Academy Nicholl Fellowship competition has it's early deadline coming up on March 7th with a $45 entry fee. I'm getting the dust off of my script to submit.
OP
OP
Man progress on chapter 21 is sloooow as it's proving to be a bit of a beast, though being ill kinda took me out of my mental zone. But I managed to get close to finishing it...then I looked at my notes and discovered that it continued onto the next page.
No wonder chapter 21 is proving to be difficult it it has 3 pages worth of notes. :|
No wonder chapter 21 is proving to be difficult it it has 3 pages worth of notes. :|
I want to join in this, but I'm knee-deep in editing and agent submissions (pending successful Beta feedback). Beyond stoked to finally share my work.
Good luck to all entrants in the meantime.
Good luck to all entrants in the meantime.
Last edited:
if you can come up with a fair way (to you) to count your editing as words, go for it :P
one of the other writing things I have done allowed that so you could still be part of word based contests while editing.
like if you normally write say 500 words an hour and you edit for 2 hours (actually 2 hours not 10 minutes and surfing youtube for 90 minutes and then 20 minutes) credit yourself 1k words or something :P
my chapters are still going decently, though I have a feeling I will have to trim them down later.
Last edited:
Well I just finished chapter 21 and it ended up being 4,500 words, I will probably have to trim it and tighten it during the editing process.
Chapter 22 will be interesting as when writing down my notes for it, it was only half a page. So I should be in for a shorter chapter this time.
This actually kind of floored me. I recently finished a chapter that ended up clocking in at over 9000 words. Kind of making me wonder if I should do the Stephen King thing and divide my chapters into mini-chapters. He'll do something like "Chapter V: The Gunslinger" but then within that chapter break it up with more numbers denoting 1, 2, 3, etc. I usually just write my chapters out to the end of the scene and move onto the next chapter, but sometimes those scenes can go ON.
I do the same as you....
Chapter number of left, word count on right
but yeah they can go on, but in general I feel like chapters should be natural stopping points. I try to avoid having to many cliffhanger spots as they lose all meaning if you do it all the time. ( as I just left off on one lol)
I just got a bucketload of revision notes from my publisher, so I'll be putting editing down as well.
I'm helping a friend with his writing. He has finished a book and asked me to give feedback. I'm immediately impressed with anyone who actually finishes, so I want to help him improve and keep writing. His #1 issue, which looks to me to be a big one, is that everything outside of dialogue is just a literal description of what is going on. I don't quite know how to describe it, but I really want to find a good YouTube video or article explaining how to expand his writing. I'm not sure if I'm describing the issue properly, but if I get his permission, I'll post even just a paragraph as an example.
for the past week i've been finishing up the outline to my story, but instead of only outlining i ended up writing inside of the outline . . .
i've just noted my word count as 0 all those days since it'd be a pain to separate story chunks from outline chunks, but it's sucked putting down all those 0's
luckily i finished today so now all i have to do is . . . finish writing the story lol
sounds like his writing is flat. that's the type of writing people are warning you to avoid writing when they say "show, don't tell"
have you told him what you think of it? he might not even realize it's a problem, if he's really looking for feedback he'll be happy to hear it
i've just noted my word count as 0 all those days since it'd be a pain to separate story chunks from outline chunks, but it's sucked putting down all those 0's
luckily i finished today so now all i have to do is . . . finish writing the story lol
sounds like his writing is flat. that's the type of writing people are warning you to avoid writing when they say "show, don't tell"
have you told him what you think of it? he might not even realize it's a problem, if he's really looking for feedback he'll be happy to hear it
I haven't yet, but I see him on Sunday and will talk to him then. I'm trying to figure out how to describe to him what he is doing, and how he might improve. I was trying to think of best way to pinpoint what the issue is so I could better help him, but I wasn't quite coalescing my thoughts properly. I was going to pull a book off my shelf and find a good example paragraph or two, and explain side-by-side to his writing so he could easier see what I'm talking about. I think you're right though---there is a lot of telling, without much showing.
heh I know exactly what you are talking about. My earlier draft has a lot of that.
I still have a bit of an issue with it, but I can fix that up in editing as sometimes I just want to tell what is going on in my rough draft and worry about showing it later.
nothing is worse than coming back to something and in a scene you were trying to show and not tell and not being able to figure out what you were trying to do anymore lol.
I'm in for this. Thanks for organising it. I doubt I'll manage 25k but the bolded persuaded me, I was just telling myself that earlier today, it's something I forget.
no problem.
have fun and remember even if it turns out like crap at least it's your crap.
no one else can do it for you.
and you can always polish crap into something better, you can never polished nothing into something though :P
So yesterday I discovered a new song which led to me taking a detour to work on a future project, leaving today for me to work on my current project.
I didn't finish chapter 22 but I did make good progress and I added more notes for chapter 22.
I didn't finish chapter 22 but I did make good progress and I added more notes for chapter 22.
I started my second project a few days ago and now writing both back to back. Although, I do have more ideas for the second project. The fantasy setting let's me get a crazier than the more grounded real world setting of the first project.
Get some paper and pen until then!
Nobody would be able to read it but maybe thats a good thing.
What I will probably do though is some storyboarding/plotting... Get myself at least thinking about writing again.
That's a good idea. Just start somewhere today otherwise you will probably put it off like I do lol
I'm not working hard. I am to lazy in nature to believe I am working hard :P
Started writing again mid january and did a good 800~ words in the first two days
But then Monster Hunter World came out and fucked that routine up, so now I'm struggling to start it back up again.
Doesn't help that the book I'm writing deals with heavy stuff and I refuse to let myself screw up any of it. Trying to balance really heavy subject matter with a bit of humor and slice of life and action to break it up, and it takes a lot. Also trying to write something in a specific timeframe while also smudging it a bit for weirdness and trying to make it clear its intentional.
But then Monster Hunter World came out and fucked that routine up, so now I'm struggling to start it back up again.
Doesn't help that the book I'm writing deals with heavy stuff and I refuse to let myself screw up any of it. Trying to balance really heavy subject matter with a bit of humor and slice of life and action to break it up, and it takes a lot. Also trying to write something in a specific timeframe while also smudging it a bit for weirdness and trying to make it clear its intentional.
That is what editing is for... I mean what good will your story be if you never finish it because you are to obsessed with it being perfect on the first try :P
but alas do whatever works for you, I just know that if I was still obsessing about making it perfect as I went along I wouldn't be nearly as far along as I am.... (granted I am still likely only 15-20% done with my story... but still lol)
and quite frankly I think my "perfect" a year ago is actually worse than my current quick writes *shrugs*
I still need to learn more, and then apply it to my editing so I can learn more, so I can get faster and better so when I have to do editing I know what I need to fix easier ect.
Yeah, I wanna leave it to editing, but everytime I go to write i immediately think of a better previous thing and get stuck again :/ I used to write a ton back in 2013~ but haven't written anything substantial in years, so I'm super scatterbrained. I gotta get used to it again.
I just make notes....
lots and lots of notes...
like... I make a list of notes for each chapter and most have 10+ things by the time I finish writing them about things I might need to change...
and then I add more later lol.
for me, aiming for 300 words a day really helped me get more organized... now some people even call me hard working... I of course scoff at that and correct them that I am still lazy... but I question my sanity more and more with each passing day that I keep up my word streak lol.
Yeah, that was part of my original routine. I wanted to keep up atleast 300 words a day but I got distracted really hard right after I started.
you could join us in the little writing competition I am doing.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZBxz97L-tg8FA8tncq7MN6BfjyAw4ouC02ClpRI8GyY/edit#gid=0
so you can see what other people are doing as well to try to motivate yourself.
plus if you make it to 25k words this month you can have a prize (most likely a steam game) :P but I imagine 25k would seem like a very lofty goal at this point.
though who knows I might have something planned for people that participated *shrugs* or I might not.... I might have lots of plans... like planning to eventually finish the prize pool... but I still have like 27 days for that lol.
Ooooooooo is it to write anything or try to write a short story ala Nanowrimo? This could give me more motivation
I posted stuff earlier, but it's write anything.
continue a project, write a bunch of different projects ect.
just don't really count stuff like school papers, or work stuff, or texts or forum posts :P
if you want to count editing you can as long as you come up with a way you feel is fair to convert that to words. Like if you normally write like 500 words per hour on average and edit for an hour credit yourself 500 words?
mostly it's just try to write, and have fun as you ideally watch your progress grow.
See if you can beat this apathetic lazy bum to potentially get bonus prizes :P
I should end up with around 40k words this month if everything stays steady to the last few months.
I definitely wouldn't be able to beat that, but I'll definitely give it a try! I'd never count forum posts though lol
Hey if an unmotivated slacker like myself can do it, others can too :P
seriously, I don't know what is wrong with me... I've never stayed this focused on anything for this long in my life @_@
perhaps I am having an early midlife crisis and instead of freaking I am just writing lol.
Half of what I'm doing right now is editing so I'm having to count this way.
Sick of it already.
Working on editing my screenplay for the billionth time before I submit it on Wednesday. I was blazing through it damn fast because I've already cleaned it up so much, then I came across one of my biggest pet peeves in movies and TV shows---one character earlier warned someone that they can't do X, because this bad guy would "tear her soul to shreds." Then 20 pages later, this bad guy uses the exact same words to someone else, warning that he will "tear her souls to shreds." It made me cringe, and I spent about 20 minutes drinking coffee, staring at my lines, trying to find a different way to describe this specific thing. Don't you love when you spend ages trying to find the right words in one tiny little area?
I had this same issue recently, trying to get back into a routine. I work a lot of hours, and I'm always so tired when I get home from work. I really had to force myself to write after work. 30 minutes, no matter what. Even if it is garbage. This was recent, but it feels like it is paying off. I also had a game that distracted me a lot, League of Legends, so I had my fiance change my password and email for my account in order to lock me out. She isn't allowed to let me back in until I finish my next edit of my script. It is sad how well this is working for motivation. lol
Yep! I've had a script for...jesus...nearly 10 years now. I've done nothing with it except edit and let it gather dust. I decided this year I'm going to submit to a bunch of competitions. I'm not sure which ones yet. Are you submitting too, by chance?
Yup, I'm working on two scripts at the moment and hoping to submit at least one, hopefully both. I think I'll probably end up going for the latest deadline though, since I'm not going to finish either by next week.
Good luck!
I just spent today eating 3 pieces of pie, hoovering and playing Bayonetta 1. Now granted Sunday is my day off but still even when it isn't my day off I end up feeling that I haven't done enough or what I have done is crap.
Writing is hard. ;_;
I wrote 30k words in sept
50k words in oct.
did two different projects in nov that both reached 50k
50k words in dec
41k words in jan
35k words in feb.
without a single day off (aka I wrote every day at least 900 words since the start of oct)
and I still feel like I am a slacker who doesn't do anything *sighs*
and that isn't even including all the data logging I am doing on scrivener that likely increases the total word count by 33% or so @_@
I'm so fucking stuck in my own dumb head with this current book that I dunno how things will go. Stressing over character voice and about a thousand other things I don't think I've ever really stressed about before.
Like, writing should get easier as you go, but the more you know about it the harder it becomes. I don't think any book will ever be as fun or easy to write as my first.
Like, writing should get easier as you go, but the more you know about it the harder it becomes. I don't think any book will ever be as fun or easy to write as my first.
The important question is...what kind of pie?
Is this your first draft or revising right now?
Good luck to you too! You'll have to let me how it goes.
I feel guilty when I don't do any writing for the day which is why I had to put down games like MH World in order to get writing done. Also told myself not to buy any games for the next few months just to focus. Gonna be missing Kirby :/
First draft, so I know it's going to be a mess no matter how much I stress about it. Which is its own fun of mental can of worms.