Current reading:
Diplomacy of Wolves by Holly Lisle
Daddy on the Way by Lois Richer
Fiction Writer's Course III by Famous Writer's School

Current work:
New project (Novel): 1,400/6,500
Danielle's Rescue (H short): finished! 1000 words
The Wishers: (F short) Finished, getting crits.

Home
Archives
Email

NAW Journals

  February 8, 2001:

Todays music: Savage Garden: Affimation

Didn't get any work done yesterday. I was putting it off, then my mom got her water hooked up at her trailer, finally. So, I was out there helping unpack boxes and finally getting to wash up some dishes that were dusty from the move and all.

I got a lot of work done today though. Yesterday I stumbled across a website for Lone Wolf Publications and discovered that they are looking for cemetary stories for an antho. This reminded me of a pretty traumatic dream I'd had in high school about a cemetary and I thought that I could write a story using that dream. I thought about it often yesterday but just couldn't come up with one. This morning while laying awake and not wanting to get up, it hit me, an entire story. I was so inspired that after getting up and eating, I went straight to work. The short turned out to be 1000 words exactly, but since I was so eager to get the story down, I didn't really work hard on detail. I'll re-write it and try to flesh it out some. I'll have to check, but I think the lower limit for the antho was 2000, so it'll need a lot of work. I'll also have to do some more looking, because I didn't see any deadline for it. I may have missed it already.

I also wrote 1,400 on the Untitled novel too. It's still going well, although I still have this feeling it will be more of a novelette than a novel, but that's okay.

Yesterday I realized that I left something out in my 'magic formula' I mentioned in the last journal entry. It's not just 'experience + knowledge = story' but 'experience + knowledge + imagination = story.'

The lesson that I read yesterday dealt with how to begin to write. It stressed a place and a time. Time is one thing I need to work on. I still need to get into the habit of writing daily.

This is my favorite quote from yesterday's lesson:

"...when I'm working on a book or story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There's no one to disturb you and it's cool or cold and you come to your work and you warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what's going to happen next, you go on from there."

-Ernest Hemingway


The point empahsized there is not the time you write. Everybody has a specific time that they like to write and a time when they write best. The point is, "...you always stop when you know what's going to happen next..." That's what keeps you writing day after day, knowing what you want to write tomorrow.

Today I start section II of the book, now we'll actually be getting into some of the good stuff, beyond the basics. Today's lesson is titled, "The Short Story." I'm really enjoying these lessons and they get my head into thinking about writing daily.

My healthy dare is still going well. I've been eating too much fruit and I know I need to cut down again. Eating too much fruit means I'm getting the urge back to eat sweet stuff and that's not good. I've got to discipline myself harder to be able to finish the dare. How many weeks are left anyway? I think this is week three.

Next week we're going to Kansas to help my sister move to Georgia. James is driving the truck for her. I was hoping that I'd get to do some work along the way, but now it seems that I'll be driving over half the way. We're driving through here and we can leave one car behind, the other one that we're buying from my sis will be towed behind the truck.

While in Montgomery, we stopped at the used bookstore that we just LOVE there, Trade 'n Books, and I got two audio books, Pride and Predjudice by Jane Austen and a set of the first two in Anne McCafferty's series about Pern. I'm looking forward to being able to listen to them on the trip.

I'm also looking forward to visiting the Atlantic coast. I've never been anywhere along that coast, except at Cocoa Beach, Florida. Someday, I'd like to visit the northern coast up near Rhode Island. I'd also like to see the Pacific coast, which I've never done.

TTFN!