Blog Archives
The Fear of Writing
Well, today’s Daily Post thingy was to pick a topic from yesterday’s list of things you’re afraid to write about and, well, write about it. Nice idea, but leaves me a little light on topics. So I’ll write about learning disabilities and my fear of writing, and the connection between them.
Parents! If you ever hear your child described as “bright but lazy” by well meaning but frustrated teachers, have that kid checked for learning disabilities right away! The sooner you can get them into a program that knows how to work with them, the less it will cast a shadow over the rest of their life.
My learning disability is called dysgraphia.
Hey, remember me?
So I’m checking my email, and I see this. If you’re too lazy to follow links today, it’s promoting two writing projects at once. First is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which, in short, is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. This is no small feat, so the second promotion is WordPress’s own PostADay Challenge, which is exactly what it says on the tin, a challenge to post every day. (Presumably, to your WordPress blog.) Read the rest of this entry
This accelerating rate of change
When I started this blog, it was with the simple goal of forcing myself to write more often, by setting a wordcount goal and expecting myself to reach it weekly. By now it’s clear that this has failed.
In fact, it’s gone so far as to be counterproductive to that goal, as I’ve more than once skipped something because I didn’t want to post trivial stuff until I’d caught up on my requests, or because it would be a short post and it seemed such a pain to maintain the tally for small changes. I’ve now totally lost track, I don’t recall when I last updated the score, so I have no idea how many words I would owe now. I do know that I didn’t post once during the entire month of August, and worse that I’ve been putting off things I might have posted during the last week or two.
So, new rules. For the time being there are no rules. I’ll just write when I feel like it, about whatever subject I have in mind. I’ll probably work out some sort of structure to it later, I’ll certainly try to maintain the “write anything requested” idea, and I’ll update the About page with proper info just as soon as I figure out what that should be. I fully intend to catch up on the Requests someday, but that’s looking like it’s a long way off. Read the rest of this entry
At least it’s an update
It’s Sunday again, and I haven’t managed to write anything all week. Ah well, this week I’m going to recommend everyone read The Path of a Struggling Writer, an excellent blog by the talented R.C. Murphy. Here you’ll find horror stories, erotica, and horrific erotica. The vampire smut is particularly recommended.
I have a personal soft spot for her work, as it directly influenced me to create this blog you are currently reading. So be sure to take a look and see if you like it.
Also, the first round of votes over on Pictosociety has ended, and my chapter won! It’s just as well that I’m stuck with a cramped little netbook keyboard, or I’d probably crow about this for a few more paragraphs. Well, that’s all until I have a proper keyboard again.
Twitter has Follow Friday, WordPress should have Subscribe Sunday
As the title says, I think Sunday is a good day to blog about someone else’s blog that I think people should read. So this week I’m going to recommend Pictosociety, a blog based on the age-old game of writing a story by committee.
The rules are here, but in short you read one or more of the stories, then write the next part before the deadline. As an added bit of democracy the entries are voted on to determine which submission becomes the “official” next part of the story.
It’s a fun idea with some neat story seeds, and since the first deadline is tomorrow at midnight British Summer Time, (that’s 4 pm Pacific Daylight Time, Californians) you still have time to participate right from the start. Come play, the more people contributing the more fun it’ll be!
Writing is hard
I never learned how to write an outline. I just don’t get it somehow, something eludes me that’s so basic and fundamental that I can’t articulate it usefully, and nobody’s ever been able to help. The closest I ever got, I think, is when I wrote a lot of little synopses for a collection of short stories with a loose continuity between them. Tiny, one paragraph summaries like you might see in TV Guide telling you what to expect on Tuesday’s episode. I think maybe I had the essence of it there, perhaps I’ll try building on that concept later. Read the rest of this entry
The Adventures of Leo Tarvi 