Writing

Brought to you today by the Nine of Pentacles, Temperance, and The Sun.

Today’s random writing is brought to you by: Six of Cups, Prince of Pentacles, The Stars

Today’s random writing is brought to you by: Seven of Wands, The Magician, and Three of Wands

I had a strange dream. I don’t remember all of it, but I will try to note down what I remember here. Hopefully I will be able to piece it back together later, but this will probably not be coherent in its current form.

(234 words today. Lame.)

We went to Kabul (our favorite Afghani restaurant) with Darren tonight. It is now 10 pm and I am full from dinner and sucking down a slurpee from 7-11. It is now 10:16. I like going out to eat but I won’t be able to do this every night unless I take a laptop with me or something. Today’s first random song from the jukebox is Cecilia. Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia, Up in my bedroom, making love I got up to wash my face When I come back to bed Someone’s taken my place ...

Another random idea for a partial story. This time I couldn’t decide who the protagonist or point-of-view person was, so I just left out the thoughts and reactions and wrote just the sequence of events. This seems to get more dialogue in, and makes the actual events happen faster. However, I alternated between too much detail (which makes the events happen slower to the reader’s point of view) and very little detail. Comparing the ride to the restaurant and the ride back shows the difference in style (probably just based on my boredom with the scene and wanting to get it over with). If I am writing from a certain person’s point of view (rather than an impartial observer) I could probably use the variations in “speed” to reflect whether the person is involved/engaged (and things seem to be happening slowly, lots of time to think, lots of detail) and when they are bored (which can flow a little faster.. no sense in boring the reader too. :) I guess I need to think more about how to adjust the level of the detail and speed of storytelling. Suggestions? Without a point of view, I didn’t really get across what they were thinking and feeling, mostly because I wasn’t sure, I don’t know these characters well yet, how they met (online, but not sure how) and how they feel about each other. So I took an easy way out and just wrote the events. Might be interesting to go back and put in one person’s point of view and thoughts and see how that changes the scene, and how it changes the word count.

Stolen from a chat with a friend…. According to nanowrimo.com tips: Start writing down, now, every single thing you hear every single person say. Write down every dumb thought that enters your head. You will need it. Also under tips: “Try to dream about your novel, so you won’t lose those hours merely sleeping…” Miche thinks I’m crazy. I say “Yes, I know” Remains to be seen whether I can write 2000 words in a row. Never mind doing it day after day. A Wish for Peace was 1917 words apparently. Christie was 2300 words. So, do that 25 times in 30 days and I’m set. ...

10:49 am. Today’s random writing is brought to you by the “Random” button on livejournal.com. After browsing several random entries, I began to see a pattern: most web journals (at least most of the ones connected to the Random button today) are written by girls who partied pretty hard last weekend, missed some classes last week, are worried about whether what Julie said about Kevin is really true, and are a size 3 but still want to lose weight to look good among the other cheerleaders… Writing the following partial story took like 4 hours, but some of that was research time and a couple brief interruptions. Hopefully I will be able to cut the time down a bit in the weeks to come; I don’t want to spend 4 hours a day, but I might be able to do two. If I choose a setting that is a bit more familiar, I will require less time for research.

I have slowed down a bit on the writing about beliefs, relationships, communication, etc. I have a few more topics I want to cover, but it’s not as urgent anymore. I have received very few comments on them, on line or in real life, so I don’t really know if other folks are enjoying reading them or not. Anyway, the important thing is to write about what I am interested in, so I will enjoy writing more and do it more often. With that goal in mind, I will need to pick some other topics, but I will come back to beliefs, relationships, etc. from time to time. ...