Tag Archive | personal: writing

A Blog Post: Phone Writing

May26

I am starting this blog post on my phone.

I’ve been doing a lot more of that in the last year — a phone is less of a pain in the ass to pull out on a short bus ride (10 minutes, one end of campus to the other) than a tablet-with-keyboard. It’s easier if I have two or three minutes standing in line. It makes writing at stoplights a possibility, and it’s a lot easier to be surreptitious about writing on a phone in a meeting than it is with a tablet or laptop.

It’s also slow compared to writing on a keyboard, even as I get better at it, and it’s interesting, because I compose my thoughts as I type, so composing to a slower typing speed has taken more adjustment than the tiny keyboard.  Continue reading →

Nanowrimo: A Summary

Dec1

It’s been quite a month!

Let’s see.

I learned, without a doubt, that I need a lot more practice at outlining Short Stories. My sense of scale is, shall we say, lacking.

Cal – Inspector Caracal – has been a lot of help in this.  Even if some of it is “Lyn? This is a novel.”

My goal was 20-22 stories, counting submission and Patreon.

I submitted one story (and made 3 false starts on another)
I wrote 5 short-short stories and three chapters of Expectant Wood, my serial, for Patreon
I wrote 8 “finish it” stories and started two others

I wrote over 65000 words just on the nano project.

So, not success, but productive & educational.

I also wrote 6 stories independent of the #nanowrimo project, started one longer storyline, and created a new universe.​

My total wordcount for the month was 77,484.

I feel accomplished!  And not burnt out! (Which was also a goal!)

Onward to December, to putting all 8 of those short stories into an anthology, and to planning for the January-April novel.

 

 

Facepalm… brain…

Dec30

Okay, so I started writing a paranormal romance (F/m).
Outlined it with Hob and everything.
Planned it out
got character names.
100 words in, made a face to myself and thought this sounds like a romance novel

Uh, self?

That’s a good thing. That’s what you’re DOING.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1035213.html. You can comment here or there.

Note to self (re. planning wordcount)

Oct23

Having a 10,000-word project (novella), a 6,000-word project (Edally), and a 4,000-word project (Ghost) in a month and a 25K goal for the month only works if you have less than 5K additional work.

Patreon is approx. 2.5K now.

There’s that commission you just finished, that was ~3K this month.

Then there’s the 6K submission story…

Math is one’s friend.

(also, I need to leave at least 1.5K for fun projects, and since I really want my “fun” to run about 10-20% of my wordcount, I need to allow for that, too. That means for a 25000 work-wordcount goal, I need to write ~27,700-31,250 words).

Conclusion: I need to shrink my project goals per month. Or increase my wordcount by 10-25%.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/996274.html. You can comment here or there.

Ideas for Novellas

Sep28

It occurred to me that I could and possibly should try writing a novella (10K words) every second month (because I could work on something longer-form in the off months).

So here is an incomplete list of things I want to write long form stories on:
* A proper intro to Tir na Cali
* Fires of Gobann
* Rock and a Hard Place (see first: Rock, Hard, Now What?)
* Prince Rodegard (first: here)
* The Kaa-tah (here)

Hunh, last time I counted 8.

Oh,
* Space Accountant
* The Tod’cxeckz’ri Paper
* Beekeeper
* Pet Story

Edited to add:
* Doomsday Academy

Edited Edited to add:
SubVerse

Qualifications:
something I’m starting from a relatively short piece. That leaves out The Tod’cxeckz’ri Paper, Beekeeper, makes Rock and a Hard Place & Space Accountant questionable.

Something I know I can have fun writing.
That leaves out Doomsday & makes Space Accountant & Kaa-Tah Questionable.

Easy/no worldbuilding?
Makes Prince Rodgeard & Subverse questionable.

Something with easy plotting?
Tir na Cali & Fires of Gobann.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/986928.html. You can comment here or there.

Productivity Today!

Sep27

Today, so far, I/we (T & I) have:

* Pulled the chest freezer out from the garage, thawed it, and cleaned up the exploded apple goo from the bottom (Cider jugs have a variable amount of headspace. Sometimes it’s not enough.)

* Run a batch of tiny apples from the Spare Trees through the squeezo set up on the mixer (T. chopped ’em and put ’em to boil a couple days ago)

* Boiled down the last of the pico de gallo from the company picnic into a passable tomato sauce & froze that

* Picked more tiny apples

(* took a nap)

(* Had a very tasty fried egg & jowl bacon w/ pico de gallo & chives for breakfast and very nice not-at-all-traditional latkes w/ more chives and sour cream for lunch)

* cut new supports for the mailbox front out of plastic wood

* Made a sour cream apple coffee cake (it’s currently in the oven) (this recipe) with sour cream from the company picnic

(The company picnic was catered by Moe’s. Next up are fried cinnamon-and-sugar tortilla chips…)

* Wrote an Aunt Family Piece for [personal profile] kelkyag/Patreon & created a Canva picture for it, though it’s not my favorite design.

Next up:

* Pick more apples, take a walk, write the last kitty Patreon piece for the month, do some Day Job, maybe do some Edally & This Other Project Thing writing. Have dinner, hang out with husband, pet cats.

* Clean up the kitchen, put the freezer back in the barn

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/986804.html. You can comment here or there.

Slump!

Sep18

I’m not entirely certain what happened – work stress, life stress, home improvement, summer, probably some combination – but I have been in a bit of a writing slump lately.

I am slowly clawing my way out of it, but I wanted to let everyone know that, indeed, I do still exist as more than a WordPress autoposter. <.<

I feel like doing character studies this week/end, 50-150 words of a given character in a plausible situation.

So:

Give me an extant character in any of my settings (or fanfic I’ve written) (if obscure, give me a link) and a plausible situation, something that ~could~ be canon.

I will write 50-150 words of said character in said situation.

See “character” under my tags for an entirely incomplete list. See Character Lists for characters from Aunt Family, Science! and Planners, as well as a partial list of “Named Male Characters with active personalities/speaking lines.”

Thank you for your aid in beating this slump!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/982240.html. You can comment here or there.

July Wordcount and Project goals

Aug3

July Words 2.png

July Words 1.png

I almost got to my 25000-word goal this month! I was just a few words shy, so I’ll count that as a win.

However, in re. projects, I had a bit less luck keeping things even. I got a lot of not-planned stuff done (see that “all other” bar) but not so much on stuff I wanted to do.

Let’s see how August goes!

edit: updated with corrected chart <.<

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/966204.html. You can comment here or there.

Tropes I like Reading (& Writing) in no particular order

Jul28

Inspired by cluudle‘s post here, written in 3 minutes so probably not nearly a complete list, and much of it will not be a surprise to anyone.

Capture the flag and all variations.
Enemy prisoner, unwilling captive, angry slave
And of course the stockholm
Princess that doesn’t fit in.
Warrior princess
Warrior people <.<
Animal people
Feral people.
A top who isn’t quite.
Corrupt society and the slow fixing/surviving it
domineering society/adults/powerful people
eugenics (as a story theme!)
Gender swapping
New World
World under the normal world
Portal fantasy
Finding Kin
Taking a clever stand against authority
Unlikely romance
uneven power roles
Thick chewy worldbuilding
Especially world-building in post-post-apoc real-world
Apocalypses
post-apocalypses
rebuilt societies
prepared people
colonization of new worlds
Alien interactions

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/962670.html. You can comment here or there.