12 Days of Christmas

Tweet

Illustration - Copyright Icy Sedgwick

I'm a big fan of Writer's Digest, and I got an email yesterday summing up their latest posts. This one in particular caught my eye - a 12 day plan of simple writing exercises! A kind of "Twelve Days of Christmas" for writers, if you will.

I'll post them in full below if you don't want to follow the link, but I think I'm going to try doing each one. The Twelve Days of Christmas actually begin on Christmas Day, and lead to 5 January (also known as Twelfth Night, the day on which your decorations should come down) but I'm going to work the other day, and start on December 13, with an exercise per day to end on Christmas Eve! I might post them, I might not, but at least it should get me writing.

Who's with me?!

The 12-Day Plan of Simple Writing Exercises

Day 1: Write 10 potential book titles of books you’d like to write.

Day 2: Create a character with personality traits of someone you love, but the physical characteristics of someone you don’t care for.

Day 3: Write a setting based on the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen.

Day 4: Write a letter to an agent telling her how wonderful you are.

Day 5: Write a 20-line poem about a memorable moment in your life.

Day 6: Select a book on your shelf and pick two chapters at random. Take the first line of one chapter and the last line of the other chapter and write a short story (no more than 1000 words) using those as bookends to your story.

Day 7: Write a letter to yourself telling you what you need to improve in the coming 6 months.

Day 8: Rewrite a fairy tale from the bad guy’s point of view.

Day 9: Turn on your TV. Write down the first line that you hear and write a story based on it.

Day 10: Go sit in a public place and eavesdrop on a conversation. Turn what you hear into a short love story (no matter how much you have to twist what they say).

Day 11: Write the acknowledgments page that will be placed in your first (next?) published book, thanking all the people who have helped you along the way.

Day 12: Gather everything you’ve written over the previous 11 days. Pick your favorite. Edit it, polish it and either try to get it published or post it on the Web to share with the world. Be proud of yourself and your work.

Track Your Writing Progress

Tweet

Last week, I posted an entry about making your own motivation to write. I feel like I possibly left things hanging, as I missed out two of the Internet-based tools for helping you to write, for both keeping you motivated and keeping track of your progress. How remiss of me! So here I am, on my vacation, but still blogging to pass on what I know in the hope it may be of some use.

http://750words.com
Have you signed in to this service yet? It's very easy - I personally sign in using the Google ID I already have, although you can also sign in using Facebook, Yahoo or OpenID, as well as creating an account. The idea behind the site came from the famous notion of "morning pages" in The Artist's Way. I've never read the book, but I do know that author Julia Cameron recommends writing three pages, ideally longhand, in the morning. The idea is to purge the mind of random nonsense, to get it ready for creating. I've seen this described elsewhere as being akin to clearing the rubbish out of an attic before you can redecorate.

Well three pages equates to roughly 750 words, hence this site! You can use it for whatever you want - writing your novel in progress, keeping a journal, doing a brain dump...whatever! It saves your work as you go but beware, it won't save it beyond your current session, so if you're writing a novel, you'll need to copy and paste into Word (or similar). Personally, I use it as a brain dump of whatever is bothering me, so instead of keeping a journal or ranting at my loved ones, I let off steam and write about the things on my mind, thus clearing my brain and getting me ready for creative endeavours!

Now, I've managed to write on five days in August, and in that time, I've written 3,987 words. When you've written your 750 words (or more), you get to check out your stats for that day. Some of my most frequently used words for today's words were "because, done, first, know, people and write". Most of it was written about the present, and the primary sense used is sight! Beyond these somewhat random stats, you get a little scorecard, which is a neat little way to keep your motivation up. After all, you've written for four days straight - you don't want to break your streak, do you?

Write or Die
This is my other favourite tool. People need deadlines - it's so easy to find an excuse not to write if you think it isn't required or expected. As the About page says, "Many people find themselves unable to write consistently. I believe that this is because their reason to write is intangible. For instance, I want to write and finish a book because I want to be published and make a living as a writer. That goal is a long way away so I often find it difficult to sit down to the task of writing. Conversely, I'm in a creative writing class for which I manage to consistently write and finish projects (albeit at the last minute). I therefore draw the conclusion: A tangible consequence is more effective than an intangible reward."

If you want to use the application, just select either your word goal or time goal (handy if you only have ten minutes to spare), along with the consequences for not writing (four different modes that range from a pop up box reminder to the application actually 'un-writing' your writing) and the grace period (three options depending on how quickly you want the consequences to kick in) and away you go.

The idea is not to edit, so when you're finished writing, you have to copy and paste your text into an editor. The concept is based on doing your writing in a burst, and then editing later, at a more leisurely pace. Write or Die just wants you to get the words down - after all, you can't edit what you haven't written.

Which will you choose?
So there you go. Two tools to help you keep track of how much you write, or to make sure you keep writing! Go on, give them a go, or why don't you let me know how you've managed with either of them?

New Writing Schedule

Tweet

I read this post on the Write Anything blog (which you should ALL be reading!) by the very lovely Jodi Cleghorn, and it really got me thinking about my writing schedule. I've never really had one, aside from trying to write the next installment of my serial on Wednesdays, so I can post it on Fridays, but I've decided I'm going to give this scheduling lark a go.

On Mondays, I plan to have a bash at one of the many writing exercises lurking in the many books I own on writing fiction. For variety, I might try using the random photo option on Flickr as writing prompts. You may, or may not, end up seeing the results of this experiment.

On Tuesdays, I'll be redrafting my novel. At the moment, I'm doing that "reading through and scribbling on the first draft with red pen" thing, but I need to be more structured in my process. I don't really like the revision process so I tend to find I avoid it (Procrastination, thy name is Nintendo) but if I book in time for it, then I'll find myself getting it done.

Wednesday will still be my visit to Vertigo City to write the next installment. I've already written a post about the advantages of writing a web serial, although I'll also add a further comment that they're handy because sticking to a continuing story helps to eliminate the fear of the blank page.

Thursday will be my brainstorming day. I've got planned collaborations with two very talented artists, and I want to make sure I've got work sorted out at my end!! I've got lots of ideas, but I need to make the time to actually write them down and develop them. Working on my ideas is something I'm very bad at, as I usually just make things up as I go along.

Friday will be, as ever, my Friday Flash day. I like to write them on the day because I often use the Fiction Friday prompts on the Write Anything blog.

Saturday and Sunday will be my days off. After all, I need a break in order to find inspiration...

Why Photography and Writing are natural bedfellows

Tweet You hopefully won't be surprised to learn that as well as writing, I like to indulge my creativity with a spot of photography. I took the photo on the left last night, from a spot outside County Hall (this was before I got moved by security since, for some odd reason, you're not allowed to use tripods in that area).

London's a fantastic place to live if you enjoy photography. You've got your usual tourist-y locales, along with the many markets and shopping districts for those whose bent runs more towards street photography. Parks and nature reserves satisfy the nature photographers, and there are buildings galore for the architectural enthusiasts. Your two biggest problems are finding a spot among the other photographers, and trying to be polite to those idiotic passersby who seem to think it's vital that they occupy the pride of place in your shot.

Still, I love photography, and it satisfies the more visual side of my brain. Whenever I write, I try to paint a picture in the mind of the reader, so they can 'see' what I see in my head when I'm writing, but sometimes it's just easier to take a photo of it. Besides, photography is an excellent way to stimulate creativity - a favourite 'game' of mine is to browse the random shots gallery on Flickr, and use the first image that pops up as a story prompt. Try it yourself and see what you come up with!

Fiction Friday #1

Tweet This flash has been taken down as it is out for submission!

Catching the muse

Tweet Writing. It's a funny old game, isn't it? You want to write, you really do, but you find yourself making all sorts of daft excuses not to. For example, I've recently taken up knitting and I find myself wanting to relax in front of the TV, needles clacking away as my current project slowly grows, and it's only when it's too late to begin anything else that I lament not having spent the evening writing.

I'm currently reading Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction, and as with most creative writing manuals, it comes complete with writing exercises at the end of each chapter. I'm making a note of these, and mulling them over, but do I actually do any of them? Do I heck. I wrote loads of material when I did a creative writing night class, and I usually write my fingers off whenever a magazine or website has a closing date for a reading period. But without a teacher/editor to give me feedback, or a deadline to which I have to work, I often find it difficult to muster up the impetus to get the thoughts down on paper/screen.

So I've come up with a solution, in conjunction with a friend. He'd like to get back into writing himself, so I'm going to set us writing tasks based on those given in this particular book. We'll each have until Monday to complete them, by which point we swap work, and then have until Wednesday to read them, and come up with comments. Then the whole cycle will begin again. Hopefully, having someone to provide feedback, and having a deadline, will kick me back into writing again...

Watch this space.