Writing Notes
Jun. 6th, 2009 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI didn't write a word today until this afternoon. This morning I ran (yay!), then showered and sat down at the computer and...nothing. I just couldn't do it. I read a lot of old dribs and drabs of things I've written before (some more than 15 years ago--I've saved all those files through several new PCs). Nothing....
Went to lunch with my lovely and talented wifesnippy. Then cruised through Powell's City of Books and picked up a copy of Story by Robert McKee, on a recommendation from kzmiller. It's a book on screenwriting primarily, but it goes into the principles of plotting and story and I already think it will be a very useful resource.
After that I returned home and sat down in front of my computer, opened a blank file, started the timer and began writing. Because dammit! I'm going to write today!
I'd just finished reading "Resolution", a western by Robert B. Parker, so I decided to play with a western motif and see where it took me. I started with a couple of characters riding over a ridge to see that their home had burned; the house, the barn, all of it. They investigated. It wasn't an accident. One of the characters checked the well.
What was he checking for? I wasn't sure. To see if it had been poisoned. Maybe a body had been thrown in to pollute the water. Or...maybe a zombie was in the well. A zombie? Yeah, a zombie. So the character probed the well as best he could to see if any zombie were lurking beneath the surface.
At which point I realized I wasn't writing a western. Or not a straight western. Western horror, maybe. And probably most or all of what I wrote today won't actually work in the final version of this story. I can see lots of changes I might want to make in it. But I have an idea for a story now that I didn't have when I sat down to write this afternoon.
I'll count that as a win.
Words Written Today: 2,023
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 43,026
Streak (500+ words/day): 25 Days
Stories in Circulation: 7
Rejections: 3
Stories Accepted: 0
Went to lunch with my lovely and talented wife
snippy. Then cruised through Powell's City of Books and picked up a copy of Story by Robert McKee, on a recommendation from kzmiller. It's a book on screenwriting primarily, but it goes into the principles of plotting and story and I already think it will be a very useful resource.After that I returned home and sat down in front of my computer, opened a blank file, started the timer and began writing. Because dammit! I'm going to write today!
I'd just finished reading "Resolution", a western by Robert B. Parker, so I decided to play with a western motif and see where it took me. I started with a couple of characters riding over a ridge to see that their home had burned; the house, the barn, all of it. They investigated. It wasn't an accident. One of the characters checked the well.
What was he checking for? I wasn't sure. To see if it had been poisoned. Maybe a body had been thrown in to pollute the water. Or...maybe a zombie was in the well. A zombie? Yeah, a zombie. So the character probed the well as best he could to see if any zombie were lurking beneath the surface.
At which point I realized I wasn't writing a western. Or not a straight western. Western horror, maybe. And probably most or all of what I wrote today won't actually work in the final version of this story. I can see lots of changes I might want to make in it. But I have an idea for a story now that I didn't have when I sat down to write this afternoon.
I'll count that as a win.
Words Written Today: 2,023
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 43,026
Streak (500+ words/day): 25 Days
Stories in Circulation: 7
Rejections: 3
Stories Accepted: 0
