Mythomania May 500 words/day--all genres welcome!

onesecondglance said:

I'm not sure my boss will be if he finds out!

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meh persuade him that the world of literature will be indebted to him for centuries to come.

I am getting ready to do a boot sale tomorrow - so not too many words today - but did over 2000 last night.

Sigh... I have an over active brain. Inspiration was the dentist in the recent production of Little Shop of Horrors. He has a shop in the main street of the nearest town to me. I've started to plan out a play. muahahahahahahaha

Wrote my working query letter last night, 380 words I am not counting towards my total, and I like it a good deal. I love this honeymoon phase of writing, when the characters and plot are clear, the ideas are coming thick and furious, my funny lines make me laugh, my planned sad moments seem deeply touching, before the Bad Days of Backspacing come and the thing is actually drafted and I realize it's less than perfect, really terribly warty and hideous if I clean my eyeglasses and look at it, and wonder what I ever saw in him it in the first place and no laughter or tears are possible in the face of such awful prose and... well, those days are coming, but today is lovely and cheerful and I'm getting some! Words, in this case. Though the parallels to shiny new relationships seem clear to me.

The cocks are crowing, the donkey is braying, so the sun is up and I must away to my errands. Good writing, all.

lorna_w said:

Wrote my working query letter last night, 380 words I am not counting towards my total, and I like it a good deal. I love this honeymoon phase of writing, when the characters and plot are clear, the ideas are coming thick and furious, my funny lines make me laugh, my planned sad moments seem deeply touching, before the Bad Days of Backspacing come and the thing is actually drafted and I realize it's less than perfect, really terribly warty and hideous if I clean my eyeglasses and look at it, and wonder what I ever saw in him it in the first place and no laughter or tears are possible in the face of such awful prose and... well, those days are coming, but today is lovely and cheerful and I'm getting some! Words, in this case. Though the parallels to shiny new relationships seem clear to me.

The cocks are crowing, the donkey is braying, so the sun is up and I must away to my errands. Good writing, all.

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Made me feel good, reading this

550 words last night. I'm distracted by some bragging I need to do: my son is going to be recognized by the Board of Education for making it to regionals in his first year of debate. Plus he just got accepted to a very competitive summer math/science academy, fully funded by scholarships. You might think people would stop saying we ruined him with homeschooling ... no way.

That's awesome news, Wonderactivist! Congrats for your son.

Nice to read of so much wordage!

918 words for me. None of them good.

1,152 so far today, and I've had some ideas about restructuring the final work to create some red herrings and add some more mystery. That can wait until I've finished the first draft, though, when I'm knee-deep in a Gordon Lish-style hack-job edit...

Bflogal - 918 words is 918 words. None of them are good or bad until the whole story is written. And even them they might not be bad, just misplaced.

Not much time for writing today. Managed 481 words. Will try and build on them tonight.

550 words last night. I'm distracted by some bragging I need to do: my son is going to be recognized by the Board of Education for making it to regionals in his first year of debate. Plus he just got accepted to a very competitive summer math/science academy, fully funded by scholarships. You might think people would stop saying we ruined him with homeschooling ... no way.

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Brag away. Congrats to your son. (And to some awesome homeschooling.)

Hi Everyone!

I have been without internet for a few weeks, but I've still been writing. I started a new novel and I am over 25K words into it, which I'm really excited about. Plus, I wrote a short story--my first one in a really long time--and I am getting ready to shop it around. I was thinking of the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, has anyone sold to them before? I've only sold one short story in my entire life, and it was a science fiction piece, so this is all pretty new for me.

Congrats Wonderactivist! That is really cool. I'm a fan of homeschooling. I kept trying to convince my mother to homeschool me, but she said she wasn't any good at math. I said, "That's okay, I'll teach myself!" Right.

Anyway, hi ya'll! This is a great thread. I'm a newbie and late to the game, so to speak, for May... but I am still going to set a goal. Some of you have such big goals! 10k in a month seems like a lot to me, but maybe I'll get there someday.

I'm working on my novella in arcs, and arc 1 was finished (second draft, anyway) at 8k. Arc 2 is almost halfway through and stands at 6800. So I'd be really happy to make it to 10k by the end of the month. That's a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, really, given all I've got going on in my life, but BHAG ahoy!

Long story short, setting my goal as of today: 3200 words between now and end of May.

Only about 200 words on WIP #1. I just need to fill in some holes, but I'm pretty burnt out on it. But, I wrote 7,500 words in the past three days on WIP #2, which is basically a sketchy idea in my mind right now. I had the urge to write (especially without the strict style limitations I placed on myself for #1), so I just went after it. Plus, writing about cops is so much fun.

Despite it being errand day, nearly 1000 words

I wrote half a page yesterday, finally settling on a POV for the scene. Onward!

Up early this morning and managed 500 words before breakfast, which consisted of cake. (Never read A Life of Crime and Chocolate thread before ordering.)

Congrats to your son wonderactivist!

Welcome to knightrunnermat.

Writing in drips and drabs, just hoping this itty-bitty word collage will add up to something. Approx 700 words yesterday, 800 words today. Took out three paragraphs written earlier in the week.

Freezing cold here in the mountains, planning on hot cocoa and digestive biscuits before I begin editing. Still flu-ridden but freshly squeezed orange juice each morning keeps the lurgies away.

740 so far this morning. That puts me through the first round through all my characters and nearly at 10K words total, which is always a nice number to hit.

Next up, a section that focuses entirely on the scientists and their data analysis and debate over What To Do and When, which means for the rest of the day, I need to carefully read the 27 relevant technical web pages I've bookmarked so that I don't sound like any more of an idiot than I must. And then I have some decisions to make about the middle's structure...or I can just write those 6000 words I may not need so that I know what went on, even if they come right out on second draft. So that's the upcoming week's plan. Today, read/research.

How's everyone doing so far? I'd like to have 10,000 knocked out by the end of the month. Going to aim much higher for June as I want it finished by my birthday (September 24). But seeing as the month is almost over and I'll probably be swamped with work, I'll aim a bit lower than normal.

I did nuffink today. Totally nuffink. Didnt even open the folder.

Just din't want to.


ETA: Wactivist - congrats to your boy

Eh, no worries, mccardey. Sometimes a break is the best thing for someone!

Trying a new tack to free up the writing -- wrote 670 words of back story and some of that might work in the text, the odd sentence at a time. I gave my character Phoebe, formerly Juliet, a larger-than-life father who had been a bohemian artist in 1950s London.

1,020 yesterday. The beginning of a new attempt at this book. It's still not exactly there but it's nearer 'there' than the last three attempts so moving on and starting the next chapter.

knightrunnermat, I've never tried to sell to them, but I think they're a good magazine. Same with Ellery Queen and Strand. The one I was not familiar with that I recently saw was Crimespree. Anyone know about that one?

wonderactivist said:

knightrunnermat, I've never tried to sell to them, but I think they're a good magazine. Same with Ellery Queen and Strand. The one I was not familiar with that I recently saw was Crimespree. Anyone know about that one?

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I have been reading them (Hitchcock) for a while, but I'm not really familiar with Strand. I checked out their site and it seems like a good fit for my story. I think I would want to read a few back issues first, just to be safe, however.

I had been cruising along with my new manuscript until a few days ago. I did manage 435 words yesterday, though, which I'm pretty excited about. This is more than I've done over the last three or four days so I'm hoping it's the end of the downward trend. I had been averaging over 1,000 words per day for the first half of the month, and I'd still like to get 30,000 words in for May, but it's going to be tougher than I thought.

Coming along well.... I think. I have been showing up to the page every day for 4 whole days in a row, which is making it feel like a habit. That's probably the most important thing for me right now, to get into the habit, even when I feel cruddy or like I totally suck as a writer....

So, 700 words since my last post the other day, but that's just what I've put into the Word file. I have more that's in my writer's notebook in rough draft form. (I seem to write more comfortably when my rough draft is longhand, then it gets transferred to the Word draft in a slightly more polished version. It makes for a prettier first draft and increases my self-confidence!)

I've also written the first draft of my final confrontation, which I didn't include in the word count above - that's at 1000 words, and it will get longer as it evolves and details get added in. This was some of the best advice I read in a how-to book on writing suspense, to write the end pretty early, so you can bring that early writing energy to the scene that needs it the most, instead of puttering your way to the end.

Between last night and this morning, 2000 words.

Got that research done and infodumped some (though about half as much as I wanted to), so I can't swear how much will survive the second draft. I do love the learning of the science and am mentally churning with vesiculation, run-out distance, secondary boiling, etc. Call me a geek. But a geek with 12000 words.