What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?

Well, I got an email saying my beta finished the book (yay). I knew this book had some serious problems, and apparently the beta says it is underwritten. I'm sort of glad (???) since my book was so small to begin with. In a few weeks we'll meet in person and she'll show me what she means with the actual manuscript in hand.

In the mean time she wants me to go back through chapter one and add more about my MC and the setting. I already knew the setting was going to be a huge problem since description is my weak spot.

ETA: She also says my problems are fixable, so that's great news.

It's time for a new laptop. I would like something fairly inexpensive which will have what I need as a writer, Internet access, video and allow me to download programs such as Audacity.

Any suggestions appreciated.

beautiful_land said:

It's time for a new laptop. I would like something fairly inexpensive which will have what I need as a writer, Internet access, video and allow me to download programs such as Audacity.

Any suggestions appreciated.

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I'm in the same boat. Love my Toshiba Satellite but they don't make them anymore. I've had it going on nine years. After December Windows 7 will no longer be supported and my computer doesn't have enough RAM I guess to run the newest operating system. I can still use it for offline purposes I suppose but I'd rather just transfer my stuff from the Toshiba to whatever computer I end up with. Besides, it is getting noticeably slower on start up and navigating the web.

I have a 17" Dell Inspiron. But I guess it's all in what you're considering "relatively cheap".

Thanks to both of you.

I don't know anything about Chromebooks. Would they be worth looking into?

beautiful_land said:

Thanks to both of you.

I don't know anything about Chromebooks. Would they be worth looking into?

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I love my Chromebook. Google Docs is all I need to write. It boots quickly and has lasted me quite a while for how inexpensive it was. I think I spent about $120 (USD). I don't recall if I bought a refurbished one or a new one, to be honest. But I quite like it. On a Chromebook, though I don't believe you'd be able to download a program like Audacity.

[h=1]What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?[/h]
My USP I guess

Hooray for fixable problems, starrystorm.

I started a short story that I didn't really know much about going into it. Now, though, I think I get what it is about and realized I just wrote the first 2,000 words from the wrong POV!

Stepping away from the main project I was working on the pursue other challenges.

Writing something short, roughly 2k words that I hope to find beta readers for. So I'm engaging with the community again.

I now know why my UF's been so grumpy with me! I forgot its birthday!

August 14(?) 2019 marks The Door in My Hand's third birthday. Exactly a year ago I was still drafting endlessly for it. Now I'm sending it out to betas.

It's funny, but I always thought (before I took writing seriously) if a book took me years to write, I would be wasting my time. But now I didn't even realize a year was passing.

Who knows where TDIMH will be in another year. (Published, hopefully).

ValerieJane said:

On a Chromebook, though I don't believe you'd be able to download a program like Audacity.

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you can, but it's a little bit of work.

OMG! I found a hoodie online that says "All I care about is Midnight for Charlie Bone...and maybe like three people. And pizza"

I have to get it! Thank god my birthday is on the 6th of Sep.

I. Need. It.

I did a 85-question personality quiz with my 12-year-old MC. Here is my favorite answer:

Q) If you had only twenty-four hours to live what three things would you do?

A) One) Say good-bye Two) Pick a good spot to die. Most likely a forest. Three) Die

I don't think he got the meaning of the question! Either that or he was being sarcastic!

I need more excitement in this part. Debating a big scene with security guards showing up. They could be the secondary character's body guards. Or maybe security guards show up, things look bad then his body guards show up. Wait, I just got an idea; this might work: the equivalent of a small right wing mob shows up, then the body guards arrive which shocks the MC because they weren't visible.

Thanks for the brainstorming help, AW.

Thank you ValerieJane and Mari. I've been doing some shopping around and have found some interesting options.

you're welcome! good luck.

Will I ever revise my screenplay?

Nope, not anytime soon.

Lakey said:

Grappling with another revision of the infernal story that took many revisions to get even close to where I’d like it to be. I have conflicting feedback from readers which I need to reconcile (or choose between). I have some feedback that I just plain don’t agree with, and I have to decide whether I’m confident enough in my work to disregard it outright. And I have some feedback that I appreciate, but find the piece weakens each time I try to incorporate it, and I don’t know whether that’s because it’s really all right the way it is, or because I’m not trying hard enough (or not good enough) to make it work.

It is tempting to leave it mostly the way it is and start submitting it, but if I do that, what’s the point of having readers look at it?

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Have a cup of coffee. Submit. Have another cup.

Just a suggestion.

Just hit the 25% mark on my current WIP (or at least what I have planned for it to end up at). Yay! Downside is that I'm struggling to get beyond this with the plot. I know what I want to do, it's just corralling the characters there. Do I introduce the romance more now? Down the road? I'm thinking down the road because I can continue to play it up, it's just getting there to do that. I shall continue on though.

I need to make some cliché parts less so. But at the same time, these things are important parts of the story because they're the reality I'm writing about.

Crisis of faith time. Again.

You know how the old saying you hear time and time again is that writers are writers because they have these stories inside them and just have to get them out? Like it's an uncontrollable force of nature for them to be writers.

I just... don't have that. My motivation is gone and I'm wondering what the point of even thinking about writing at all even is. I don't have some great story that's yearning to be told, nothing I think of in terms of writing feels remotely significant or worthwhile enough that anyone, including me, should give a shit about any of it.

I wrote several vignettes, all with the odd focus of active, complex sibling relationships. My characters are always only children or have been estranged from their families for some time, so writing these unexpected little stories was a nice twist for me.

My current WIP turned out to be one of those epic fantasies with a sprawling cast, so of course some of them are not cis/het/white/able/neurotypical. Through the course of this novel, I have discovered that my main, main character (POV1) is a young blind woman. The other protagonist/love interest (POV2) has inherited my various mental illnesses. His childhood friend, upon meeting another character, told me he's gay. An important, non-POV character who I will have to write POV through for the sequel, is black and ends up marrying a white character 10 years her junior.

The only character I'm able to write POV from with some authority is the love interest.

I've mostly been devouring Mythcreants blog posts in an effort to portray these characters to the best of my abilities, but I am still a little on edge, especially when it comes to world-building. I don't want to slip up and write anything with the potential to hurt real people.