LeSwordfish's February Writing Project

LeSwordfish

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Aug 8, 2010
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As you might know, i'm an amateur writer. I like to write stuff, but motivating myself to do so can be quite hard work. I tried NaNoWriMo last year, but i found it kinda hard to get into thanks to the extra rules it had. Plus i had several deadlines at the end of the month, and i didn't manage to finish.

So i was thinking about how i could motivate myself to write more and i decided to try a self-given sort of thing. Just… write. Just get writing. Just stfu and do it.

Two rules.

  • A thousand words a day. That’s not 28K in a month, that’s a thousand in a day. Writing ten thousand in a day does not get you ten days off. I might allow myself some leeway by “booking” days off ahead and doing them in advance, but i have to book them. If they aren’t in this blog, they don’t count.
  • Release what you write. Far too often i write something then put it in a file and forget about it. Nope. I have as much of a hang-up about releasing writing as I do about actually writing it: this has to be about breaking out of that. As such, everything i write has to be linked, by the end of the month, here, twitter, on tumblr, and in the “Shutupandwrite” IRC chat. An eclectic collection, sure, but should get me a wide enough audience to not worry about it any more.

That’s it. Not trying to write anything specific, not trying to hit an overall target. Just… shutting up and doing it.

The link to the project as a whole is here. Day one and three's writing, the later part of a short story called Glowing Prospects, is here. Day two's writing, an even shorter story called "Finishing Last" is here, and kinda needs a trigger warning for mysognistic language i guess. The narrator's a dick.

Obviously everything i post is a WIP. Glowing Prospects is unfinished, Finishing Last is unedited.
 

GPuzzle

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Feb 27, 2012
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Ha, I had been reading your stories and such and I thought that they were really interesting.
And the idea for the game in "Time Squad" (it's a game design pitch, not a story, thought) is new and interesting. So far I came with a basic logic for the game, but, like everything I do, I can't sustain it.

Well, good luck with that! So far so good.
 

Trotim

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Jul 14, 2009
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1000 words a day seems like a ton to me but then again I'm a bad writer and all my experience comes from making basic ~1500 words blog posts which take me like ~5-8 hours each
 

Bermuda Cake

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Feb 20, 2009
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1000 words a day seems like a ton to me but then again I'm a bad writer and all my experience comes from making basic ~1500 words blog posts which take me like ~5-8 hours each

5 to 8 hours is abnormally long, I'd say. 1500 words is about a page and a half of A4, standard font size.
 

Trotim

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Well they weren't just fiction or train of thought I guess. What I'm saying to say is are you sure just writing more words is gonna help you improve? I wouldn't know but I'd imagine writing shorter texts but refining them more would help more...?

edit: Ya apparently 1000 words per hour is considered normal. Huh. Guess I care too much about specific phrases
 
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Tarry H Sruman

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Jul 31, 2011
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Under the watchful guidance of his older and more prominent brother, the Mexican cartel boss Pon Raul, Ron Paul and his faithful catapults strode confidently forth across the Abyssal Hall's grotesque mosaic of alabaster and obsidian tiles. He approached the Blackened Throne atop its eight million steps, each adorned with the diamond-encrusted skull of public sector union officials, and bowed deeply before the Dark Imperator Dick Cheney. He looked up, his eyes wide and wet with tears.

"Senpai, did you notice me?" he said timidly. His nineteen blackened hearts beating in unison, he arose from the Blackened Throne and screamed in a voice so vile and detestable as to drive the fifty thousand Chinese virgins quivering at its base into babbling fits of madness. Pon Raul quietly slipped into the shadows, and Ron Paul's faithful catapults shattered to ashes before the everlasting creature of the night.

"I REQUIRE MORE CHILDREN TO FEED MY HEARTS, ELSE I CEASE TO LEAD, AND THE FORCES OF DARKNESS BE BANISHED TO THE NETHER REALM FOR ETERNITY!" He bellowed, causing the stone itself to tremble and crack. Ron Paul rose to his feet and looked down with pity upon the shriveled husk, so dependent on others for his continued health. He drew his unregulated handgun from its concealed holster as per the Second Commandment, chambered a round forged from white-hot, molten freedom and bravely and patriotically slew Cheney atop the Blackened Throne. He began to scream, but was consumed by a red, white and blue flame, turning him to ashes and scattering him with the wind. A great golden eagle descended from the heavens and rocketed gracefully into the Sun with the brave and patriotic Ron Paul atop its back.
 

LeSwordfish

semi-trained quasi-professional
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Aug 8, 2010
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Well they weren't just fiction or train of thought I guess. What I'm saying to say is are you sure just writing more words is gonna help you improve? I wouldn't know but I'd imagine writing shorter texts but refining them more would help more...?

edit: Ya apparently 1000 words per hour is considered normal. Huh. Guess I care too much about specific phrases

The point of stuff like this is that if i wasn't making myself write, i wouldn't be writing well, i'd just not be writing. Better to bully myself into writing and then make it better some time than just not do it. Like a 72hr mapping contest: you won't get a fantastic map, but you'll get a map you wouldn't have got otherwise.
 

Seba

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Jun 9, 2009
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If you're going to post this on twitter, link it; I'd much rather follow you there than on tumblr.
 

LeSwordfish

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Aug 8, 2010
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I should do that, yeah. My twitter's in my Signature, and it's linked from there.

Today, another thousand words of Glowing Prospects. I'm kinda loosely happy with how it's going- i know it's not great but for most of NaNoWriMo i was fully expecting to have to do a complete rewrite, which doesn't seem to be happening so much now.

(Also i finally worked out how to establish that the main character was black, which is hard when nobody really gets described.)